


Sick and Vile

by Failed_Joyce



Category: Original Work, Ulysses - James Joyce
Genre: Despair, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, James Joyce - Freeform, Love, Modern Era, Obsession, Original Fiction, Rape, Schizophrenia, Stream of Consciousness, Violence, joyce - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:09:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 64,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29115786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Failed_Joyce/pseuds/Failed_Joyce
Summary: The story follows a young man deeply infatuated with his neighbor. One day, he gets invited, by accident, to a party at her house. The reader then watches his eight days of mental preparation for his encounter, however, he struggles to find permanence with reality, shifting essence to the whim of the author, and agonizing over memories he cannot be sure are even his.
Relationships: S.V./?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. BREITHE

**Author's Note:**

> For some clarification, this work in many ways is a play upon James Joyce's character Stephen Dedalus, with me wanting to take that character and push his nature to the extreme. In order to do this, I have imbued my own mental health issues (although I am not schizophrenic) and many of my own experiences into this work. So, to me, this work is both fanfiction and original fiction. 
> 
> In the original text, much of the book is redacted, a sort of self-censoring on behalf of the main character. However, ao3 does not permit redacted text, so instead of deleting it, I will let the reader see what is not meant to be seen. Much of the other formatting in this work is also omitted, such as playing with font sizes and having text overlap to help simulate psychosis. If one wishes to have the original experience, a paperback copy is for sale on Amazon for $8.

# BREITHE 

As the red sun shines between the powdered clouds, a grey ring of water forms from the edges, running to a point. The single drop trembles in the bright sky, suddenly, it falls, moving through the air, coming to meet the thrashing green sea beneath it. The single drop, like a whisper, a loud hush, a grating sound of rippling water, expands forever onward.

The clouds begin to crowd the sun, turning the bright sky into an array of deep waving strands. The sea stands still, an innumerable number of blue eyes protrude from the water, opening and rising, the sound of terror bringing them to consciousness.

I stand from the nude bed with great difficulty. 

My ears open wide, the scent of a time disastrous unfolding before me. The taste of ash fills me to the brim. I move forward, stumbling in the hot air, I reach, and I pull back the curtain, a glimpse, no more, a tight, wee, pull.

Houses line the road. Nothing stirs on a quiet morning, the reflective noises echo silence. There across the way, through the black tar moat, there she sleeps in her tangled web of joy, her, my light, her, my sweet ?. If only I could rest as well. Tired motion, tired whines, and yearning for everything. I act on nothing.

I am spiraling through the passage of life. Months, moments, time becomes. A blurred time of isolation and solitary action from the world. All I do is… all I do…I forget.

I gaze beyond the façade that lines her house. Her lotion, the balm, softness in her. Happiness. Confess everything. I stretch my arms and the joints pop, creaking in the stillness. Shaking iron leggings, rusted shut, naked legs, naked arms, shifted stillness, I move through the room once more.

Standing before my mirror, now in the bathroom, I see my slick hair bend across my pale face. Days. Moments? No. I am covered in mugged filth, so I open the drawer beside me, pulling out my utensils. The cream is whipped softly from the stiff can, and the smooth blue gel wraps upwards. So cold. I haven’t even? What? Finish your words and speak you monster. I take the gel and rub it in, I keep my movements short, tracing the thin details. Left side firstly, then over to the right. Up and down, yes, good, good. The cream is my delight on the face. The razor is. Finish! The razor is…fear. Not the razor, but my eyes upon the razor. My eyes, my swirling aperture to my soul. How they’re warped here, the truth brought out in distortion. My razor makes me afraid. The sharp movements could end me. Why don’t I? I see my eyes, tears, tears, they fill me again, drowning my skull and motions. The cream is still there…the razor is lifted to the air, I take it, higher, through the air, the shine of darkness reflects outwards. Illuminate me, O spirit. I trace the vein with the tip of my razor. Left to right. The blood runs from my hand to my wrist. The warm drip of my life, coming out. Down the drain like all things. A disappointment that one was. I cry again like always. Always the birds chirp in silence, how we all think of such ways. Life and death, ending and beginning, all the same, we are. Thoughts and urges, the same.

I bandage the hand in soft padding, with some tape over it. Let it heal so it can decay, that’s what I say! Meaning? Is it meant to confuse? Why am I speaking in such a way to confuse…?

My stomach rumbles in a desire for food. The soft trills move me to walk. Guiding in the will of me, I must eat, I must sleep, I must be human, remember, always human. Brothers and sisters, we all are.

I open my door, and dust pours through the hall; the chilling air is wafted into my face. I close my eyes and I am relieved. My bare feet slide calmly over the thick carpeting, I refuse. I see it all, the void of necessity, mother once told me a story of a boy too fat to walk. Best not eat, best not spoil the time. Close your eyes, fall down the stairs. Open them and live in the world they want you to live in. Or shall I be here? In my basket of rotten apples? Question, after question. Always in my mind. I open my eyes. The kitchen.

The tile rubs my feet with a strange coldness. I move lightly, and my skin touches the ground with a slight sound.

Why must I describe this? What is the point? Question and write, feel the tingle. Die, who cares about such tile? Stop asking, they will leave? Who? The surgeons, those in the observation room peering over your actions. The demons of purchasing. They will take your life, and it shall be propagated. Cereal, why can’t…. STOP THE QUESTION, YOU CANNOT QUESTION. BE HERE, AWAKE, RISE, RISE, STOP. FINISH.

I open the fridge in a quick movement, bringing out the small plastic jug of creamy fluid. Why not just say milk you monster! Complexities and insights of nothing. Tchaikovsky, his portrait, it hangs next to the fridge. It stresses me. _Take it down then!_ I pour the cereal in the bowl. Where did it come from, this thing? Why me, why this box? I feel no urge to eat, yet I feel such the urge, I feel no urge to let my heart beat, yet it does. Let me be free! I pour everything in.

_In goes the white,_

_Out goes the light,_

_Over and over,_

_The bird takes flight._

The bowl glides gently into the empty chrome sink. I move my hand to lift the faucet and the water trickles out in slow succession. Everything flows, yes. Flow and flow, perhaps a distant pathway that brings it here? The soapy aroma of my sink touches my nose, clogs my nose.

The bowl is swiftly washed and set on the drying rack next to the sink.

A sliver of light peers through my curtains. It dances on the endless motion of my hands, twisting and turning, falling upon each form. I suppose this is all it is meant to be. A passing something, passage within a passage, the light to be read of, and never read of again.

Something rustles through the bushes, I peer outside, my eyes meeting the light, a bush. Brushing bush that moves. I’ve always cared for rabbits; my ears seem to pop forward like a dog. Dogs kill rabbits, don’t they? What is that there, a statue? The woman in a man? The man in a woman? Both? Too many questions for a day like this.

I sit on a small wooden chair next to the small wooden table in the kitchen. Creaking simplicity, always funny. Dammed splinters! I suck the blood dry, small and easy to remove, I feel lightheaded, perhaps a lie down is due? Yet, my eyes linger upon the portrait that looms over the empty kingdom of the kitchen. The tea is finished. When? I get tea. Who started this? I did…I feel…keep moving…forget the distance and plebian mannerisms. Embrace everything, reject everything.

His hair is white, pulled backward slightly, flowing from the front of his head to the back. His suit, the clad cloth that coats him so well, the beauty and depths of the Russian, almost Germanic soul. The carved letter to speak a dozen lifetimes, the angels to protect his finality, the endless, endless, finality. He rests in my home, the silence of his calmness, the swaying sun that lights the depths of his jewel-encrusted eyes.

A shriek rings out from the electronic synthesizer and flies upon each surface. My head shakes in fervor. The doorbell? The charred note, cast in the dust, long forgotten? Again, and again, I remember my loss. Again, and again, I repeat to myself. Fear. Bring me freedom, leave ye no gift for any man.

Something. Where? Short, and short, a knife? A gun? The man of no face? Scream already. Walk away and never return. The noise flashes once more. My mind is at ease. I am calm. I forget. I breathe, I hide behind the wall before the door and I lick my lips. A dry crust, peeling freshness! Stagnate air that looms by the darkened door. Dark house, perhaps, dark. Nighttime, no, unnatural dark. What does it mean? Not the time for prose. Fly. Open it. Open it. A woman? Her aroma, I remember. The noise. Right. Again. The noise. I pull back the sleeve and light tears me open.

I open the door.

“Well hello, Mr. Illy.”

That name. His voice. His eyes. My name? No not my name. Maybe my name? I take the package. I speak softly, a single word comes out, rolling off my padded tongue touching the particles that dance like sparks.

-Hello.

He leaves. I close the door and lock it tight, so tight, the wood might burst. Stirring. Wood and vomit. I realize.

I see the package in my arm. Slowly it flitters upon the dusted air, flung above by the swift door a moment ago. _Bang!_ I run, my muscles tear open and fear incarnate explodes through the movements of my enigma that is…finish…hide. Who cursed me with this? Let me be free, death within the box of anger.

Too many words. Simple. Fear. Stuck. Here. Death. There.

I go into the bathroom. I shut the door. I lock the door. I sit in front of the door. I breathe. In. Out. My body flies above the dismal simplicity of what is, to a place of infinite eyes that are blind. I open the package. The box explodes, shrapnel flies into my skull, my house catches on fire. I am in the bathroom. I cry, my mother holds me against her bosom.

I open the package. A white powder is flung into my face. Three days later I die. Two months later the police go into my house due to reports of the smell. I am in the bathroom. I wet the bed; the sheets are changed.

I walk over to the box and let it sit there. My doorbell rings again. I go to the door expecting to awake in my bed. The man stands before me.

“I believe you have a package of mine, young man!”

Across the road. Yes, that man. That one. Him. The daughter. Father to my love. Her eyes open slightly as I stand before her, her light, the wonderful radiance. She embraces me with passion and the hand of the demon that is lust is cast away and thus, unity is brought forward, and the heavens dissipate under the pleasure of our coital action. Awake. He walks inside.

“Dark in here ain’ it?”

The voice soaks into the porous stone that lines the two of us. Slick and slimy, the greywater stagnates. Black and filth we become. The ocean dries and the sun becomes a bog. Do you get it? Yes. Of course. No more comparisons. Well…he is here. _We_ are the same. Again, he moves with little hesitation, circling through my condensed living room. Hovering around the brown container of unknown joy. Maybe? A bomb? A shirt? Too big. A book? Too small. What? He circles, again and again, a bird of prey.

_Strike the bird betwixt his breasts._

_Pluck him and swoon him._

_Caress the wasted flesh and burn it under the sand._

Speaking? Does he speak? Words of something, maybe, listen.

“Well then, what’s your name?

“…”

“I have a daughter your age, there, uh, across the street and all that, well uh yeah, we are right over there. How long have ya, uh, been here? Not long, right?”

“…”

“Well, we are hosting a little get together down there, in, in, uh, next week, next week today. We’d love it for you to uh, come over ya know? So yeah, I’ll just see ya if ya wanna come.”

The box is under his arm. Snatched upon the air with swift movements, unknown by all those who can see. Seen by those who cannot hear. Voices reverberate upon the sunlit asphalt beyond my sight. Anger. Sorrow? What? STOP THUS WITH THE QUESTION YOU FOOL! PERISH!

He leaves with little care upon his movement. The door slams, the scent of dried blood floods my face. I vomit.

Something always stirs in me at moments like these. He was born a long time ago, the man. Birthed by love, unrefined and cold. Unaware we all are now, unaware. He always smiles, pacing across his lawn, back and forth. Teeth always shone in their yellow elegance. A hint of hatred.

Woeful dreams are wrapped in smiles. Warped, wrapped? Wrapped, warped? Sanity is fleeting, do not cherish it.

I clean my mess, thinking of how many times I have been on my knees, cold and in the dark. Sick to my stomach. I always had the duty, and the honor of cleaning up after myself, mother says it makes many strong. How many? If? Joycean I am not.

The muck is peacefully wound up and dutifully tossed away. My hands are filthy. I take much care to present them cleanly to my own eyes. Who else? No one, just me of course.

Speak to me. Birds of the floating manor, speak upon your wings, the loft you have cast aside in the air, playing peacefully with no care, speak. Speak and I shall listen. Hark. Words interchangeable to us, to you, the birds of the spiraling council, unknown. Screams echo in the room at the end of the hall, the smell of mother, the smell of father. I am unknown. We all are. Beautiful habits, the birds are. The blues of coarse attire, the streak of a soft black, the shine in their eyes. The joy of the unconscious being. The birds sit and peck, eat and defecate. Something never to be thought of. Simplicity one might argue, and I shall argue, is all but preferable to the dandy habituation of consciousness.

Am I even human? Most times I forget, but then in a moment, a single flash of bright light comes to me. It is as if I was not a mere word on a page (or several words!) but that I, was flesh. And at that moment, the time in which the bars of homeostasis are flung away from my mind, I can see. Warmth and churning. My skin is alive with the motion of clothes. I feel everything within this moment, my toes, and brazen pale skin. The ripples under my skull. I see my face, and I am reminded, I am being, I am exterior, I am YOU.

Now, the time has come. Evening. The sun has crawled away, and it is time for breakfast (dinner). I get dressed in silence (I live in silence), and I place my brown shoes on with ease, the pointed tips glint within the slight shine of the evening sky. I have always been prone to brown, well actually when I think of it, I seem to own more black things than brown. Interesting, the dyes, wonder who thought of it? The cold touch of time rings now. I tremble in memoriam. I see her. Her, who to you, but the queen to me. She is curled up on her bed, the pink sheet around her, the soft smile spread across the gentile shape of her. Her, who to you, but a queen to me. Repeat. I always. Just remember, hold on. She is there, softly there, tender in distance, yet so close in mind. Some nights we speak for hours in total silence, my aperture of the soul pouring out to her and hers to me. Me, her, her, me. We are always one, I know it.

_She doesn’t see you; you haven’t even spoken to her._

Of course. I am tiny in her closed eye, in her open motion of every movement, motion to movement, I am but the unified void resting behind no light, the disquieted light of action. She, she shall live in peace and joy, husband around her. I, I shall live in horror and melancholy, house afraid, paintings infinite.

I stand before the door, hesitation. Hesitating. Always as such, hesitating. Mother said it was my worst trait, waiting, the fear. I take the knob and turn it. Simpler than before perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Something to something. Each house is cold, with no lights, no movement. The air stems over my skin, a new air. From the dry house to the damp exterior. Wettened skin, the tight skin. A moonlit journey to entice me outside, the hidden stars, beneath the Earth. How little they all seem to notice. The brown brick painted over and over. Lovely isn’t it? The testament to man. Perhaps a Bible, perhaps a doom. Something in it all. Beauty, or what, I can’t tell. I am leaving Hermitude. I cross the street, the silent click of my shoe echoes in a softened manner. If only I had someone here. An Irishman, an Irishman who knew the world, the man who could conduct a grand debate on life, liberty, and love. An Irishman. Or a German, a German who could speak of war and peace, of the future, and who is to come. All but figments of the written plane. I can see them now, so close to me, so alive with glasses and mustache, with skin and suit. Peace and War. The Mountain and The Sun. Men to speak of great prowess and motion, men who could relieve me of this movement.

I cross the intersection, no cars. The lights, all red. I step up on the curb with brisk hesitation.

Men who could no doubt, outline the future, each a contradiction to the other, yet great companions, sure, but glorious in independence. Men who have carved their channel in the path of the world, spinning, and growing deeper. A German and an Irishman, one atop a mountain, the other, the streets of Dublin. Men who changed it all. I too. Men who, men who would spit upon me no doubt. Men who not even turn to my eyes and would cringe in the sum of my being. I, not even worthy of the glance but worthy of the hatred. Should I be saying this to you? Black it all perhaps…perhaps not.

The store is dimly lit by the radiance of only several lights overhead. The scent of sour fish wafts through the air, gliding by way of the clinking fan in the corner of the room. The tiles, white, all white. Not a spec of clean air, dirt, and hair, stains and steps, feet after feet. Noise buzz, tv is on. An Asiatic language hums from the underside of the screen. Bright text flings from right to left, the man, seated across from the screen, staring forward through the mist of the evening air. He doesn’t move.

Form after form, the tantalizing motion of the dreary life repeats itself here within the bosom of all dreams. We dream of the splendors of life; we live the nightmares of it.

Three fish, rainbow, bright, fresh, old, young. Left to right, aligned in the peace of birth. What do I mean by the buzz? The left, the right? Words? Symbols? Question after question, the onlookers grow dreary.

How long I wonder, has it been since I uttered a word? A month maybe, a year? A day? Maybe I have been speaking for so long that my voice has reduced to nothing but a silenced howl? I place the packaged fish tightly strung to each other on the counter. The firm pounce of the pouch echoes. He turns with a dash of disdain sown into his movement. Emotion reveals itself. His browned and furrowed brow never lifts itself to my gaze. His arms crossed, then uncrossed. One press, two, and three. The ding. The number flashes to my right. The drawer opens, the money enters. Did I hand it to him? Did he? Always? Have? It? Let me speak the quick action of hate, let me speak the slow pain of love. Let me. Let. CEASE THE ACTION OF REPETITION. A BORE YOU ARE. A BORE. A BAD CHARACTER. A BAD. BAD. BAD.

Do you hear him too? The voice, I mean, of course, yes, the voice, he, always, is, mean. His words are stern with robotic manners of guidance. The peace he must bring to those who are incapable of hearing him.

Night terrors rob the quiet girl who ruined herself. The powdered guide ruins. Her body brought by the all-absorbing hands. The darkness. How beautiful she once was, the stiff smile of peace and joy. The beauty in her. Now, she is, so thin. Her hair falls out in movements of lumps. The eyes are pulled downward by the weight of her fear. Close them, and never, open, again. She is gone to me now. I am but a toxic path to hatred, she loves another. _I_ love another. I still weep over the room of blue that once was, for the black pitch that now is.

I take the now bagged fish with my right hand, carrying it gently, my arm fully extended downwards. I walk alone, back to. 

-What do you say we do? He spoke with a calm sense of anticipation.

-Go home I reckon, cook the fish. I say with a guided sense of repetition to my voice. Maybe I will make tea later. For the both of us.

-You know, he began with his finger thrust into the air, you really should not treat yourself in the way you do. You are quite talented in many ways.

-Oh? I’m doubtful, but humor me why don’t you? In what ways? I smile with ease like no other.

-Well, his strides growing longer, moving ahead of me, his head tilted upward, I say you have an action of attitude about you, quite fitting for the loner!

I chuckle as he continues no more with his phrasing.

-Enough, enough! We smile, we walk. Cowell he is. Cowell, the man of many tastes born of bright parents, held in no esteem, but always bright.

-Oh, look who it is, Cowell says as he stops and points to a man across the road, it is Jeremy Rel! The man of all men!

Rel waves as he recognizes us, looking both ways across the street before he runs over. 

-My friends! Great to meet you here! His teeth show gums that peak out under the yellow lights above.

-What were you doing there, you devil? In the dark! Preying upon the lone counterpart, are you! Cowell laughs at his crude humor and is met with Rel’s redness.

-Bite my arse you bastard! Of course, I wasn’t! Simply enjoying the peace of the evenin’ sky I was. He nods his head in a single motion of sternness.

-Nay, you weren’t! You were searching for a poor girl to toss in yer tub you were, Cowell jabs him slightly on his waist, causing Rel to guffaw in an unattractive manner.

-Fish tonight for you both? He speaks looking to change the subject to not catch fire by way of embarrassment.

-You gentlemen both sound like Irishmen in such odd ways at times, I cut through. They stare in silence for a moment. They laugh loudly.

-Now, why would ya say something like that there? Utter randomness that was! Cowell laughs and laughs, Rel clapping along.

Peace here, among these two men. My friends, dear friends. Learned everything they could back in Ireland, moved here to see if there was anything else left to learn. There wasn’t. But they meet this lack of thought with joy, never sorrowful they were. Together they stand in unison. The opposite of forms to the world around them. I must be getting back now; I am keeping them waiting.

-We must go to the harbor this weekend, Sunday perhaps, clear day, Rel ends the laughter.

-Sure, of course, Sunday, December 22, 1916, it is in my book. Cowell writes it down in his quaint black journal he keeps in his breast pocket. At times he scribbles words and phrases he finds to be profound in it. He begins aloud. Well, what ought we do at the harbor there? Walk and eat? Tea and fish? A pint and a girl there? You know harbor girls are very sweet on men, not as much as the Catholic girls in the countryside of course.

-Not as much as yer mother of course! Rel shouts in the predictable manner of youthful harassment.

-Why you dog spotted bastard! Cowell slaps him from behind, laughing. They yell over each other:

-Calm down, a joke it was, a joke it didn’t mean nothing! Just a joke! I hadn’t even met your mother before!

-Don’t speak about my mother, you protestant abomination, I ought to whip you like a Jesuit would!

With screams and hollers met with the tinge of laughter they are drowned beneath their voices. A joyous time of three companions. Rel runs forward and stops, bending over slightly to pull his pomade hair back up, guiding it into the previous position. They both pant with smiles spread thinly. Gravel sounds loudly beneath our feet. We walk in silence for a moment, each of us with our eyes affixed to the crème colored moon.

No stars tonight. Damp air now. Rain soon. The day between the rain, the night before the pour.

-Rain brings renewal, the sun dries it to death. My voice is hush underneath our walking.

-You sound like an old book you fool! Cowell once more laughs. Always, he laughs behind the seriousness of every attitude, laughing, warranted laughing I might add.

-Nothing wrong with that, my friend, some of us are more silver at heart, whereas others are merely coated in a thin layer of gold. Rel, the solace of harm. Fictitious they are. They slip from me as I come to realize no human can ever speak in such a way, ink on a page. Him, him, and I, ink on a page.

_Eve of action,_

_Birds of the morn’_

_Mourn upon the morrow,_

_Smile upon the sorrow._

_Beastly speech and Beastly hands,_

_The man,_

_The men,_

_Never defend…_

We continue in our silence, each of us, wait, it has already been said. Has it? The crème, the gravel, our laughs, his hair. Said again, time again, same words, same smiles. At first, they warmed my heart. Together in school all of us, walking in the park. Fencing with sticks and running amok. Together we were my solace of souls. Now, they age with me as well, old and decrepit, aged merely twenty-three. They warm me no longer; I wish them to. My fixed figures of clean glass, no failures between them, always comforting my shortcomings. Helping me up. Now they must go, find a wife, have their children, I am but a restraint upon them. Tonight, is our final night. Final, together between the creaking gravel and treeless road. Final together beneath the crème and starless nights. Grow old they must with their wives and families. O my creations, I shall love you. Grow happier they shall, grow weaker and afraid I must.

We come before my house, the moon washes the world in its light, an endless tinted stream of chilly warmth. They stop and stare, in silence, aware of what is to happen. They continue onward without me, the sounds of their inked shoes tapping on the pavement, slowly retreating into the noiseless hum of the evening sky. It begins to rain. Seven more days.


	2. SEVEN

# SEVEN

My eyes. Blinded sheer sights, my eyes. Closed off darkness, I can recall the washing waves. Deep blue gems that cut at the thick green muck. No, not me, another, years ago, 1904. A crab digs back to the ground as a gull sweeps downward. It misses. Ascending back up, it glides steadfast, hovering above the hesitant waves that pour out from the bowl. I pass a lonely man on the shore. We meet with closed eyes.

A boom rings in my ears, the beginning of whispers, light strikes me with such intensity that it pierces through my closed lids. The clanking of chains and ecstatic singing deafens me, my eyes and being melting into clay.

I slowly sit up in my bed, my head still pounding from the eve before. Walking, voices, and vomit before. Squabble arouses me gently. My skin, dampened in fear, another terror came to me the night before, a dog, two dogs, black and invisible to the sight. The sounds of children ring out under the clouded sky. Pale realities. Winter? No…one is in a dress. Summer then? I don’t recall.

Two boys are fighting with long thick sticks in the road. Funny, Achilles against himself. Voices the same between the two, threats of death and capture, mud on their knees. My hair is slick, I need to shower soon. Mud, right, mud. The third child, pale and pure with her platinum blondness, rests on the curb. Plucking softly at her skin, as one would pluck a flower. Or maybe she is holding a flower? I can’t be certain. My head, it aches.

Her legs are rounded with a plump evenness, her figure still yet thin. Red flowers, white cloth. Silk in her eyes, I ache for freedom. Love of youth as one loves a statue. A frame of peace I see now, upon this curb, her legs open one day soon…open and wide, free for eyes now. Free for a cockard one day soon…

It is a shame I must admit, to tear the painting wide open thus before it is finished, all is revealed under her, her legs, open…I watch in disgust, as one would watch a kitten squeal in terror. Perhaps I am but the disgust, I seem to recall. Mother said my skin was muck, or it was acted upon in that way. My ego is made amongst the mildew well, meant to be mused over in silence. We all, they all, us all, clichés, bedridden we are. _Legs_. The symphony must begin.

Legs open, the painting is torn, blots of red ooze out, I sweat more, aching hands now. The simple girl of pale skin, forlorn in her purity, lost in the woods of goblins and brownies! A dear creature to be seen. One day soon she shall thus depart, trickles in all. But now in her plump smoothness, her body clean and free, yet she is permitted to be open. She is unaware of her mistake. Now soon she shall cling to the arms of men and drunkard monsters who prowl for the release of “their lower natures”. Her skin torn and beaten, the bruised and failed thing, a whore. A time in whence we are all lost, forgotten in our motions, drugs and intoxicants swirl round by round like delicate leaves in autumn. I weep no more for the loss. Her single frame of self is now, in her red, her blue silk eyes. The milk skin of a thin viscosity clamors. Her hair, blonde and bright, smelling of jasmine, the cliché once more…is she thus? pure in her downfall?

What is purity I must imagine? Assignment of motion, I lose myself. I, always, think…back, retrace the words, they were listening…no they weren’t. Eyes follow me while I am speaking of aches and pains, children, and Achilles. Words and eyes stare. People unbeknownst to me. A fool, just a fool I am. Her eyes meet me. A flash, fear now. No more thoughts of purity. She has seen me. How? Hide now, flee, I hear the voices, thawed voices, they slam on my door, open and open as smoke fills the room. Tears are heard outside, her finger traced upon me. Eyes of all the fellows stare upon me. Caught watching. Stones and eggs were thrown at me. The pounding, the father, a gun to my chest, taken her I have, taken and stole. I can never be forgiven. I vomit again and again. The eyes watch, they witnessed naught but me, she did, she did, the boys scream in horror, due to my face, I am losing alsooui SI CANnot stay awake, my eyes. Hers. She saw me, I touched her, jail, and death upon me.

_Again, slower this time:_

The police come upon my door, they pound, they kick it in. I am hidden away. Her tears didn’t stop me. I am shaking, trembling in fear. I should have. They restrain me, the neighborhood is gathered on my lawn. Voices ring out to me, my name never uttered, but things are thrown. I see her in a blanket, eyes red, the two boys clutched by their parents. Everything is. Everything.

_Breathe no longer:_

The car door opens, police around me, the father screams, I turn to meet the blue of his fury, the gun meets my chest. I bleed out over the ground. All stare in joy. Eyes twitching, a failure I am. They depart. My body, taken by the vines. Never to be seen again.

~

My nose, the water runs on it, my stomach pains for food. I feel the pale flesh ripple under the thin beads of warm water that trace me. The lime residue caught near my feet. I clutch myself in silence, the warmth of the water grants the illusion of another.

It wasn’t always like this. Joyous I once was, together we were. The slight hint of love, given way to the white blossom of a rose. Together we once were. But as all things are, I was cast aside. I am not a victim, I need not pity, but simply to speak. Speak to my self in times of angst and remembrance, speak to any soul who happens…happens, to watch. No, I must, I have to tell. I want to speak, to unhinge my jaw, and let my soul trickle from the gap in my lips. No, I have to tell. I have to. I want freedom. I want, I want to tell.

Destitute I was, four years ago, believing still that something of grandeur awaited me in nature, now I know that all is fair upon the milk of the twilight. She had seen me glide beyond her, hidden on the other side of the room, learning of the mind, learning of behavior, we learned together. New thoughts and new motions, I wished to see. So, she showed me. The warmth beneath my coiled serpent, warmth in my group of two. Dreams and fantasies hindered by the restraints of her parents. The distance provided longing, the distance provided strength thus for a moment, and thus I feared that the strength would give way to reluctance and an urge to flee. Something guides me. Later…the water turned cold.

I pull the plastic curtain and I stand amid the tub, staring avidly at my reflection. My eyes meet my mother. She sits beside me each day, her feet and mouth echo in the house. Phrases that anger me, silence now. I open again and imagine everything worse; the chilled tile touches my wet feet. I dry myself hastily, wrapping my head, arms and the rest of my skin tightly. Nothing extends beyond me. The reality behind the curtain is hidden from our view. Blindness is the life we choose. Or is it but a shackle around us? Fear guides me.

After drying, I shut off the light, the room now dark I hear nothing but the muted dropping of water beneath a murmur of voices. Hollow voices, hollow, everything. I cannot smile in discontent, I cannot be reborn, I have flown too many times. I recall I am hungry. Each piece of clothing guides itself over my body, the large brown shirt, the loose thick shorts. My right eye twitches, the feeling of hunger wraps itself around me. I resist as much as possible. I clench my eye, twisting my eyelid in hopes to stop it. Endless hunger, days reduced to cooking and eating, no more, no longer, no more, last one, final ripping of skin boiled and fired, final bite of blood gnarled teeth.

I leave my room and I descend…

Fog now, the foggy eve of the afternoon, the daylight dimly lit. I cannot. I do not, I am written, the blood of ink, the skin of paper, eyes of a colon. Remember the nothing of everything and get on with it. The fridge opens and I begin. Do I? When? Wh-

_Begin:_

_1 Pork Loin_

_1 Shallot_

_Salt_

_Pepper_

_The zest of one lemon_

_Twine_

_Two portobello mushrooms_

_1 Onion_

_Olive Oil_

Knives of blood patterned steel, cold lumps of sunlight against the black. Lame flame, lame cock, limp…words to distract me from everything, flowing thought of concrete rivers. What does it matter, futile action, love, and peace? We live, and I love that. Yet I wish to cease, but not to die. Make peace to the fire and

_Stir gently, don’t let it burn:_

keep onward in motion. I remember it all, her favorite meals, the scent of Arabia deep in her home, my heart aches once more, fire calls to me with its pale hands.

_Place in the oven now, spoon the oil, absorb the flavor:_

I do not, I cannot walk onward, lights call for me, my hat adorned, I am sat in the wooden chair, by the door, voices, and scents…

-Three servings of the beef, two fish, one chicken, hurry.

The voice dwindles to a cluster of sounds near me as the swinging doors to the kitchen close swiftly.

-It has been twenty minutes, where is she…slow down.

I cannot stop the thoughts and fear, I am either anxious or happy, maybe both. She knows I dislike restaurants, but I want to meet her tonight, I must. I hope she wants to meet too. Well, otherwise she might have said no.

The seats are coated in velvet, the rest a deep brown, faces lit by nothing other than the single low candle. Fast motions hid away in the kitchen, everything else, almost still with speed. I ordered a while ago, beef for me, with mushrooms and onion. I know she likes fish so I…maybe I was wrong, I see her. My eyes fill with a vague smile, she speaks to the host, he points, she looks. Something, sorrow, joy behind it all. A mask, she speaks.

-Hey, I can’t stay long, sorry I’m late.

-Oh, I already ordered for you, sorry, I uh got you the-the fish. My voice, intermitted with chuckles, slight pants. I’m in a suit. She isn’t dressed fancily. She doesn’t let her red purse off her shoulder.

-Well, I won’t be able to eat it, but I need to tell you something. It’s that-. The waiter comes, he places the plates down on the deep green tablecloth, he speaks buzz and his eyes dart back and forth, a mask. We all have one on. Everyone knows this already…

She smiles and nods, words in her mouth, he leaves, the sound of the dim air returns. She begins again: We can’t be together.

-…

-…

_Speak_

-…

-…okay.

-I-it’s just that we’re too far away, the only time we talk is over the phone plus I met someone at church already, this is all just more worry and longing. I’ve already opened you up, you need to move on.

I recall it so well, the clattering of plates and spoons, the silence, a great silence that washed over my body, the ocean filling my lungs. I was seized with terror by that awful beauty that rose from the silence.

I spoke:

-As you wish.

Three words to end it all, three words so often spoken. I am but a pitiless man, weak and feigned.

I never imagined it to be like this. I had hoped, yet wrongfully hoped for a home, children, joy. Life giveth, but always, life taketh away. Pessimistic nonsense anyways.

~

Furl, furl, furly robes, and red wee lips. No more candles, no more her, it was the last time, she said we’d talk. We both knew. Something splits me apart from all things, a shattered mind. Darkness encompasses me and my empty plate, cold and stained with blood, messy fork, messy eyes. Full of pale tears. I need to move…

~

I decide to begin a walk tonight. I had before gone upon my walk for fish, Thursday night, as that is fish night. But now, I shall walk _to_ walk. Beginning at the end of my house, searching for the green bench that overlooks all. Words and words, I speak in silence. Am I thus I? Or shall we and you exist in this sediment? Am I simply all things taken in, ink on a page…repetition?

I put my coat and pants on, great black and grey, cover from warmth. Sewers like to sew, webs of worlds, nude bodies, funny world, always freezing with hard parts maybe. Straighten your thought, think, and glide forward through the falsetto of your confusion. At night we rest and those who are not we, perhaps they are I, walk in silence. All the same, we are. Hips and breasts, balls, and cock. Scandalous! Words in which one’s mother might hit you for.

I gaze at my door, hand in my pocket, a rosary resting in the right one. A small thing, wooden, black string, tight beads. A gift. A temporary object, a temporary…temporary. All is, all is not. Here and there. Begin, walk before you cry. I shake my head and mover. The door opens, I take to the sidewalk, the men jumping not now, tomorrow. Today? Quit this. Walk. So, I do.

At the end of the road, I turn right. I follow the tall tan wall that ascends with the hill. On it grows twisting toes and ribs of deep green leaves, vines, spinning and spiraling, choking the trees above. My fingers are smooth against this rough grain, the cold air turning my hand red. A ball rolls on and over, bouncing through rocks, a red rounded sphere, so plump, take a bite, rubber bite. Not real. Recall.

_Steel bounce,_

_Still ounce,_

_No more pounce,_

_Count life out…_

So, my words are spoken. Birthed and dead for a moment. Poems I speak, meant to be forgotten. To remember then is but a great sin. Let us live and die and be forgotten. Let us all be but washable ink upon this grand page that is life herself. The leather-bound book stuck upon a dusted shelf, beneath the new mind of a house atop us, the shelf coated, webbed words. Our world was written here; many others next to us. World beyond world, the depths of a library so endless beside us, each written by a fool to believe himself, God. A fool he is. Life written by sweet lotion, the scent of sweet flowers. Her touch was as cold as the fires of her written soul.

I from leap thought to thought. I stop for a moment. The orange light of the lamp above me pours out, buzzing over the cracked concrete, buzzing, buzzing, and buzzing. A single stop, and I see it. Between the crack in the pavement is a small flower, upwardly sprouting and bright beneath the light, looking for warmth from this artificial glow. Woe is glee, glee is woe. Glummy and gummy words that move not even a rock. So, the flower, so he, so it, no more one, suffers. No more profound than the lifeless stone that sits beneath him. A fall that would result in nothing but death. I see us, I see him, I see all things. Yet I see nothing, not a shred, the veil of sorrow upon me, upon you.

I walk around the flower. I fall in front of the orange light, the final lamp on the sidewalk as the sidewalk itself dissipates in suddenness and becomes dirt. No more wall, no more houses. I have reached the plateau. Green trees stand crooked and upright, spaced intermittently, patches of grass and stones between them. Benches carved over the edge, not my bench. Not yet. Tall trees, curved and cut, painted here for the appearance. Painted on and smeared. No sun, no moon, no stars. Trees and trees and the lone piano that hoots silently atop his throne. Long ago, my soul had begun to ache. Long ago, I was born. Maybe not in this reality was I truly born. But somewhere, beyond this potential simulation and stimulation that is life, there must exist a place in which reality and truth are conceived. So, let me never open my eyes, and let me suffer in this life. No matter how false it shall be.

The lights then all unwind before my eyes beneath me. Everything in this endless spiral. The reoccurrence. How many nights have I sat here? This day currently. Ink on a page, nonsense to be. Written and rewritten the world flies by. I knew a man at that building down there. It is old and empty now. The one place about a hundred or so feet away. He was a short man, stout, even his mind was stout. But funny he was. Jonathan was his name. Christian of some sort. But does it matter? He should be gone, keep moving perhaps, even I am getting bored.

I move my shoe through the soft dirt, pushing it to form a trench. Soft dirt, damp and dry, would be cool in my hands. It was always the best at tasting dirt. Always bothered me then, cry I would with my face in the dirt, grass stains on my shins. Laughter around me. I don’t seem to mind the memory, when I think of it now, I probably should not have cried then. I might have deserved it. In the way, always watching, like a stranger. Peculiar people oughtn’t to go unpunished. I can hardly remember a lot from my time then, like green water it all is. I can hardly remember these days either. Bubbly blurred edges, no steamy clarity. Something after something, the mud of emotion.

I knew it was going to happen. At first, her words were sweet in my ears. But then her warmth fled as quickly as it arose. Quiet and cruel it became. Words became knife after knife. It happens to say many. We see none but love and are hurt. I need not pity but simply to speak. I need not pity but simply to speak. Perhaps I wasted her time and one day she awoke and realized it? Perhaps she saw my weight, my grey eyes, my shame in my words, and she realized the destitute ways of my life. The weakness in me, not fit to be her husband. Young and young and young I was. I loved her. We all love _her_. At some point, she is but trusted to us. Some of us come closer than others but always she realizes our unworthiness. We speak words to calm all yet we cannot seem to calm ourselves. I am not worthy to be heard. I am sorry. Please, burn these pages as I should have been. I am but wasted ink, printed, again and again, no solace, no love. I cry, we all cry. I have not endured, I am but rocks upon the shoulder, the tinges of God have left me, slivers of joy not within me, rejected by it all. Ink it all away, expunge my failure. I failed even before it all begun. If only I pulled that trigger.

I cannot. I want. I am. Not. Words always break apart from my cold lips. She spoke the words of love, yet my mind did not believe. It screamed, it screamed, always, always screaming. My time departed so dearly, my time, waste to her. But I have found another, we speak more clearly than before. Her words in my mind, I wish to speak. Yet we do. I see her home and she does not see me. Is this love? Or but blind worship? Of course. I love her. One day soon her eyes shall be opened, and she shall take me into her arms, her lips upon mine and it all shall be fair, her life, my life, our future. No words to hurt, perfection upon a berry. Perfection, no shame. Yet now I am weak, I wish to see the world unfold as the carpet does for a prince, yet I know I am but a hermit. A silenced soul not yet worthy. My mind upon these pages. Written by myself. A story that should not be read. Yet one that should be talked of.

It is getting late. I have been here long enough. My soul feels damp. The clouded skies stand before me. My life in a box. A Jack I am. Grey, I am. I wish to be wound yet my song is but weak, my paint is but peeling, my clothes are but tattered. The lone clown cast aside. Never to be loved. All of us here, many clowns, never to be loved. The sorrow immense, joy shall we bring, yet we wish to be. Speak softly the song of songs, speak softly the world to be of our nature. Feel the trees bend over our hearts. Let ye be but the man to burn these pages. All of us but tantalizing marks of paint cast upon soiled brick. Woe for none, and none for woe.

~

I see the flower once more, this time trampled. As I stop to stare, I realize. A click of pieces placed together. A blue car drives past me, dim white lights. Dim yet it hurts my eyes. Realize. I see now that as the small flower is crushed and befallen, that not one care is granted to it. That if any are to pass by, not a single tear would be shed. If anyone did listen, it would be met by scoffs, anger. I feel the same over my complaints. A sheer disgust fills me at the thought of my woe, at the thought and recollection of all I have said, all that was shared. All that is to be shared. I would blacken this scribble of ink if I could.

~

As I descend further down the hill, I walk towards an empty lot, passing through it. I come to a small path winding to an open field, waiting. A distant sky, words, and scents of soup pouring through the rooftops of every house. Here on Earth all through their hands and heads the connected blades of grass singing their harmonies. I feel so alone. My bones always creak in me. I feel so alone, and I despise it. My mind wanders in anger and frustration as a wave of intense heat comes over me. Frustration over my work that has brought itself forward to this point.

I step into the cold bath, the clear water refracting the sight of my nude body. Sliding in, over the yellowed plastic I sigh from the sting of pain from the water. I close my eyes. I draw a deep breath and I hold it for a moment within the cracks of the bathroom, no door. No door. How did I come in? I plunge beneath the water, fighting a red hand that holds me down, a red and burnt hand. My lungs open wide, flexing against my ribcage, pulling tight, I try to scream in the water, nothing but cold drops fly through the bathroom. I try to breathe, yet I cannot. I feel a charred hand pressing against my body, my skin bubbling. I manage to lift my eyes from the water for a mere moment, my gaze meets the great blind hand, the scarred terror gripping my heart. All trembles as my lips part to release a scream, but I fall back again, my lungs filling with water. My body gives way from the physical, and I am reduced to soot, no more pain from my toes, my legs, my torso, my arms, all falls away into damp cold ash beneath the green waves of the murky bathwater. I taste the dust in my mouth, as my body ceases its thrashing. In one final moment, my eyes reduced to this ash, my face falling away, my soul too, crumbling beneath the burning hand that holds me below.

A voice hums silently. I have lost all vision, here, beyond, crawling through the field of endless nothingness. My eyes close, covered by my thin skin. When I open, the sound of the voice disappears. I am left sitting by the bluff, wind against my cheek, my sweat reduced to residue. As I try to stand, my legs shake for a moment. I stare forward. The city singing in evening silence, stretching limbs outward, the soft lights moving through the scape of dark green trees, touching the endless sky, devouring the delicate white stars, singing an ode to eternal nihility:

_Come, ye hallowed soul,_

_Come, ye crooked mind,_

_Come, ye splintered being,_

_Come, ye,_

_The man of my era!_


	3. NEIGHBOR

# NEIGHBOR

As I sit beside myself, I recall a day, not long ago. The setting sun was coming over the tops of the houses, and as it did so, a great hot fan of orange stabbed through the blue, this once seemingly unchangeable blue now bent and turned over, now spread open and perverted by the sun. Not a single cloud was wounded around in the sky. The orange seemed to last for an eternity, the deep and bright orange touch every high point of the world around me. The shingles of the brown sloping roofs illustrated with deep jagged shadows of endless patterns, small spaded edges of bright light. So intensely it shot outward, touching and prodding everything. It brought me to tears, this sheer orange that touched even my skin, the orange that shone through my thick black curtains in my room. I think for a moment now. I think, I write a poem.

_Love is this,_

_The pain of unawareness,_

_Here,_

_They jeer, my voice,_

_No dear, No dear._

_No man, no child,_

_Only a void to never run Wild._

I ball up the paper, and I throw it into the bin, a feeling of wrath overtakes me as the lines of the poem fade from my mind. I pause and allow myself to slip away into my rabble of thought.

My house is but an echo of my youth. I had always craved this loneliness, true isolation. It is but a healthy serving for my soul. My stomach no longer aches when the eyes dissipate. The red eyes upon the charred corpse, crammed within a box, he stirs in my company of others. The eyes, always jarring in their stares. Rain today. Or tomorrow. Today is not the day of action. All of this, moot. My curtains, the curtains, sliding doors. Everything dashes in its mannerisms. A single tree stands away from it all. Blocking the. Nonsense. Let us resume.

Perhaps I am doomed to my tower, perhaps all has been learned, I cannot comprehend this knowledge that I have? It is so minute, the words, a mere smudge upon a smudge. The universe is but born, my words are soiled, everything, soiled. I cannot write today. I should not share, close the box. Close. Close.

~

My own life before me. The pages, the burnt edges, the smeared ink, others clear and white. Yellow and faded most of it is. Everything always so. So, and so. The twisting motions that mean nothing, my pain, my love. All is but the distant eyes that stretch over the burnt weeds. Garbled nonsense all of this must be. Man is alone, woman is warm. Man walks alone, no one to hold his soul, bleeding endlessly, the woman finds a smile behind every face.

Maybe all is meant to fade, the sanded strains passing through the soft forest, all as we mark our own graves day by day. It wasn’t always, maybe always was. Sorrow, I mean.

Like Icarus, I fly higher upon the clouds, their yellow swirls so high above the jagged ridges, something so euphoric. My mind seeing the sun in its glory. The warmth upon my back, fantasies, lone fantasies upon the azure sky. A great blue sea of pale white dreams that unfolds for eternity, the pyre of bones and mist, the saintly tower of lone desert wandering, centered in this eternal sky. Reaching out to the lone set of bones and flames, I am stabbed within. Then I burn, my skin toiling to flee their bones. My body shattered; smiles given away. Heart lost; stomach folded. So, I follow the path so long flown by so many others. Too close to peace, and thus I plummet. My soul is torn faster and faster as the world devolves into calamity. My eyes close as my wings are ripped by the fiery pacing of the atmosphere that encroaches. Dirt hills coming upon my view, the memories of past flung before me as life is slowly taken away. The days become moments of thoughts, tears, and artifice. No remorse as the death of a thousand specs is sown upon my skin. Trees coming above my head, the dark shades pulled longer and longer, the wind speaks a thousand silences. I fall. My back is sopped in the wet dirt beneath the tips of the thousands of trees. Everything and all is seen. The wind over me, flowing over knot and stone, the grass grows. Birds chirp as they fetter, no they shan’t fret. My skin tightened and coiled, with roots and vines. Dirt is thrown atop my eyes as I stare at the distant sky that beckons so. The last clump is tossed, and the last sight is seen, the flash of leaves flowing, the paleness of the world so misunderstood before me. I await to be unburied, for a soul to stumble upon me.

~

The sliding door opens slowly, creaking to let loose a burst of shine on me. My head is tilted to the ground, yet I still recoil. My skin is pale in this light. No sounds are to be heard adjacent to my yard, so I walk further. No faces, no screams, only birds. Green grass under me, the wet stones make the path. I smile for what once was. When was it all, the time I was here? My youth cast away, my youth. Young, twenty-three I am. Am?

I stretch myself open under the sun in a chair. The true warmth blankets me as my eyes softly slip. Everything and all, all and everything, a phrase, an utterly useless phrase, said time and time and time and time and time and time again. Pseudo-man I am. Days are lost, my consciousness slipping, no thoughts, last to be recalled, last to be recalled...

Crawling gives away the secret of webbed feet. The man of no scorn, the demon of martyrdom has crawled asunder my skin. Tight dreams. Tight, tight, gitighitigigihitigihit. My mind a mess, the darkroom, the corridor, the room, the alleyway. Everything turning. I feel the hark of Neptune in my ears. Dive upon the sea, cast ye asunder, feel the bones of ye own spirit shatter. I ascend the steps. The music dipping in silence. Atop I begin. The smell of nothing is present. The smell of nothing. I feel afraid. Black walls ribbed with ripples. Crimson stone batters my feet. No door so tightly is sewn before. Screams come inside. Screaming remains, and thick bones snapped. Splat and splat, whip, and whip. Nothing is heard now, screaming blood scattered. Ticking eyes, the world spins and spins. The clock, I spin, the man is there. Children and children. Hand to the door, the mother screams. Her hand in the sky, her eyes, the wrath of Neptune. The wrath, I cannot silence. Smile to see the wrapping paper

torn, smile to be tucked in. The hands to

uch my, me, my. I cannot. Ticking time an

 **d** m **el** ted hands, false imagined dr

eams. The door opens. No hand, only chair. A s **i** n

gle chair, the light spinning as the chills take me. Numb after the bruises. **V**

ery numb, naughty boy, failure of skin. My h **e** a

 **r** t covered in h **a** rde **n** ed whi

te ash. **C** rumbling f **e** tus made of ash

How do I live that t

he world be so **fr** ee? All pe **o** ple s **m** ile a **s** I w

ish to d **i** e. A bug am I, and bugs must be crushed. Let me float back to back. The time of life perceiving the motio **n** of death **.**

Mother wishes for my death; no hope is in here. No motivation, let me feel anger. Soul upon the soul. Teeth gnashed at me, let me free. The dogs and birds pick at me. My skin blue and black. Lone and forgot my ribs poke through. Bitten and eaten, a snack for the souls. Misted eyes shatter my darkness. I float in the sea. Back and forth, paddle over the wave of my hand. Blue dripping teeth above me as sanity flees my world. Passing trees in the eyes of the teeth. No images. None to be seen by none who do not understand.

Fail before it begins. I am shackled and nude. My body wrapped up. A man before me clutching a whip. I am sobbing, dried blood over me. He smells of me. He screams in anger.

-Failed before begun, wasted air could be used for others!

-Loved by none.

For each word, I am given another. I deserve the pain of a thousand lashings. Perhaps more? My eyes crushed by blades of grass.

My feet touch the cobble of Dublin. Dreamed lands set in a time before. Dreamed, dreamed of dreaming dreams. The tall brown buildings stand side by side. Small plots of persons lined around the block. Clearing the houses, I come to the sun. I cannot think anymore. My mind. My eyes can only see the empty fields of cattle that graze. I pluck the feather to my heart. Nothing left to give, abandoned upon the horizon. Perhaps the arms were torn from me? Her breasts so sweet I cannot seem to recall. She hated me for it.

The light of the sun heels me over, my mind crammed awake, a voice in the distance, calling. Noise?

“Hey there! Hey there!”

A face in the distance, a distant voice to accompany it. A man. Stranger.

“Hey there! Hey there!”

Closer, he arrives, I sit up to get to the door, but I do not move. Run and keep going, he is reaching for you, he will hurt you, please walk, please I am begging you, please pull your legs from the muck beneath yourself and stand. Walk. A voice.

**“Hey there! Hey there!”**

I turn my head to face him. He opens my gate and walks into my yard. A plump man, white shorts, green shirt. A bulging waist. His eyes wrinkled and fixated, his teeth torn, passive man. His mustache clean and straight, licked, fuzzed. A sight to distract from his large nose. A smelly man. A man who smells? A man who smells scents? A man who smells poorly? I confuse myself.

“I hear you are going to the dinner?” An inquisitor sent by the lurking beast, the one who prowls the streets in her gown. Both animals, one lesser. All of us are animals. All of us are lesser.

“…”

“Well uh Barb, Barb my wife uh…she wanted to send me on down right over here since well stranger, you’re our neighbor! About what…three years you’ve been in there? Never seen your face before now huh,” his voice cast aside by the faint glint of a laugh, “welp, uh, Barb wanted to know what you’re bringing so to not uh well, make a mistake and all that.” He pauses, a single moment as if I were to answer, the pause too short, there was never going to be an answer from me, this is not an inquisition, this is a command.

I sit. A moment. “So, Barb she is uh bringing her potato salad, ya know the fellows uh around they uh…just uh…can’t get enough of Barb’s potato salad! SO, she wants you to bring an…um…a dessert.” His pauses are not ones derived from fear. He is sturdy, yet his mind must assemble before he speaks. A slow man, witted dimly, flickering bulb, a beast in shackles. Perhaps all of us in shackles. I nod my head and he turns to leave.

“OH! Right! My name is Rob! Rob, Barb, my wife, us, well her name anyway, Rob and Barb O’Neilly.” He turns to continue. His feet sliding across my grass, arms moving to and fro, glee in his openness.

I feel sick from my judgements, my pseudo analysis that reduces to nothing more than a simple array of meaningless shapes. An array of paper cutlery.

I am still seated. My mind awake in the presence of my muck. My legs free, I tumble into the house. I bring the curtain closed, and tack it back into the wall.

****

****

** Noted Thought One (Time): **

I saw her once. My light. My dear that once was. I saw her. So vividly. Her and him, what once might’ve been me, him and her. Holding and touching. Tongues grazing and loins colliding upon the eve of the midday. All the things I never did. My hands too afraid to grasp the porcelain beauty betwixt my sight. She walks, I am but invisible to her. I was never enough. I am not enough. My sides resting, hers, toiling. Resting on words and letters I practice the art of failure each moment as she slaves and builds her body. Working for money she is above me always. He is but her dream, the man with no wire to cut him in twain, the constant, the power. I am but me. We are but me. All the men along the line, plucked by the hand of the temptress. Her being of power. My mind of brittle. But this is gone. She had crawled from my gaze and has set herself free. All that is left to do is but to weep over her residue in my heart. I am long forgotten. A new temptress plucks me out now. This one less gorgeous than the last, this one less than the less of the self that is we. A woman has never hurt me, I have only hurt me. And even if one of them has, I had deserved it.

~

A path of black cobble stretches through the valley of eyes. The eyes that passed gaze to each other. The doors all shut, glass side by side. Autos blazing the trails of a place never seen. Erected towers amongst the now shriveled lands. The dirt is spoiled. We were made from Her, She had loved us, then we murdered Her. The bosom of blue milk now dried upon our greed, the soul of Her laugh once loud, now lost and afraid of the spiraling bars dug into Her.

A hawk upon the burnt tree, the fluttering sight of power atop the soft pyre. Pass over pass, the chords struck, and deals bargained. My hopes were high. Love in the meadows, kisses to be shared. Now there is no meadow to be seen, no meat to be consumed. Only man is to be consumed by man. The spirit of a thousand Eons, forgotten.


	4. SIX

# SIX

Stirring next to my painting, I begin to tear at the canvas. Crumbling softly, the paint leaves a residue on my fingers, slick and sheen tasty metals and oils down my throat. A buzz runs in my blood. No one speaks in the club of melancholy.

Do I search for pity? Do I pity myself? Or do I simply despise the soul that crawls within me, underneath my pygmy skin? I declare that pity is vile, yet I pity myself. Which, am I, weak or strong? My heart cannot decide. Words and speech, sparking dust, toed fingers that scratch my scalp.

On foggy days I sit by the window, from morn until dusk, watching, waiting. The spinning ballerina lined up and down the stage, I watch. Words I cannot speak. For the earless peoples are all but happy afar and ne’er afraid. Gibberish.

I take to my wooden seat, old and creaking, worn leather rear on it. The wood is peeling, and soft. Always makes my back hurt. I have other chairs to use, but I would never be the same. My feet are bare, dug into the thick carpet in my room. My chest, pale without clothes. Fatty thickness from ribs, my frame lean and swollen. What’s the point? My words, am I written to be this way? I curse the man who writes a happy character. Let him be never like me. Click-clack the woman runs in her rubber shoes. Bouncing hair and bouncing bosom, young in her eyes. Something hides beneath the mist of her soul. Maybe once profound, now, the green laces and black jacket weighs upon her. Hatred for her counterpart. Run it all out. Push out the black breath that fills your mind with such hatred. Run and run and run let you be free, save the soul from solving. Mother always wanted to run. Her bones were too tired. She worked and worked, slaved her soul. Often angry, her sweated soul ruining her bloodied bed sheets. Chipped hands and bruised skin, my soul trembled in silence before her. This woman will be my mother. Nonsense remarks, about nonsense blotches. I make up everything around me, all of this, I know, fed to me by a tube. Tired and afraid, anger upon the question. Her feet grew louder and louder, I can hear her breath, hot, loud, running chills down me. She quivers in a single pause, the sensation of her breasts rise, the gentle skin, swoon me. She comes so near, up by my door, the pause in time, slowing figures, the piano sat in silence, the harp hardened. Running stomps, quick and quilted, my dear, my dear, the fog shall take your soul. The lark sings to us all, but not to you. As soon as she had crossed upon this world, from the thick fog, she so soon was eaten by it once more. All but minor observations, the snapped ideal around her. Snapped. Quick. Less than.

The muted sounds beaming and bouncing, never speeding, only louder. No one came upon the road for quite some time. All was silent, my eyes (are they mine?) saw only the quiet branches. The soft. Soft, soft, sand, eyes, sand, soft. Quickly, I sat in a long moment. She turned in her sleep. I saw her. O my darling, the love. Turn in my arms she shall, alone tonight you are, but soon I shall kiss you as you wish me to. The gently skinned, soul-touching your body, quiver, yes quiver. Let the pink of your womanhood radiate. Love me, the man who sees you so. Talk to me…talk….

The door opens.

-Dear? Her voice, the sweet honey, the honey of yellow flowers. She beckons.

-Hello love, how was work? I run down the stairs, clip-clop, fast movement. Her eyes are tired, but she smiles to see my skin.

-Exhausting, I’m glad to be home. She smiles, the soft, pastel cut of paper. Her smile painting openly, the arms wide, she smells of love and hatred. Both may be for me.

-Well I’m glad to see you home, do you want to shower, and I’ll make you a cup of tea? I spoke with softness, understanding, wind yourself in, you are but the servant. Worth the shackles to love her so.

-That’d be wonderful dear. She kisses me gently, the soft swoon, her old breath fills my lungs. I grab her waist and she moans slightly, pushing her thick thigh between my legs. I pull back. She walks up the stairs and I stare. Her soft rear, the soft cushion for me. She sits atop me, stroke her hair, my soul smiles. I walk away from the steps and….

A car races through the road. My mind pulled from my dream. The car is blue, soft blue. Thin in the fog, it pulls. The bright yellow lights, fingers pawing through the air, scratching for freedom from the sand around it. A dark figure, female, sits in the front seat. Her body meshed inside, not lines but the outer. Her body, whs? Mother sits quietly dead in her bathroom, spiked dream in the arm. Quiet soul, resting in her urine. Mother. Dreaming mother. The car softly screeches aloud, tight belt, tight, tight, black smoke to clog my veins. The puttering soul moves with it. I see no eyes in her. No eyes. How. Can. Man. Live. Written in ink, I see nothing, written in ink, I slip through the cracks. He turns His back to me, no more black blots to clog my speech. Silent souls, I slip to my open-eyed slumber.

…I move toward the kitchen. Round the rounded wood chairs and thick rugs. The black and brown. Deep Arabic scents culminated from ash. I hear the water above. I see her. The nude, the nude for me, the arched body, the ring, no ring. I fill the kettle and start the water. I lean over the sink and I take the….

 _Clickclackclickclickclack_. What? No, let me run. My dream urges for me. Let me. A dog and a woman. The dog paced ahead, tongue out, the booged and bogged eyes drip and droop. The spiting spin of the brown dog paints the paved road. Her. Her. An older woman caught…

…soap and wash my hands. I hear her singing loudly from above. Sweet ribbed joys ringing. I sit on a stool, listening to her, watching the still pool outside. The water turns off…

…by her leash. The dog runs, the click the clack, her rubber soles in silence, bouncing. No bosom of sight, only nightmares. Only the age of tomorrow, the loose, loose. Pale and brown, cooked by the sun, the soul pushed to the top. She lives in her quiet motions. I try to move away, but I can’t. Two places, hardly one mind. I trace her as she slinks away back into the muddy dream of age…

…and the kettle boils. The door upstairs opens, her body invisible to my eye, but clear to my soul. Her motions so real, the pulsing dream awakens in me. My movement, the hardened rock, creviced nighttime I pull it away. Never let her see. The movement stops as I pull through the house. The white counters, the framed photos, he in all. My face was never written. Transient dreams, her soul belongs to her. I am not a part, nor am I whole. My soul belongs to her. I serve. I die to serve. I live to die. The day is pale before the sun sets. Soft yellowed whites that fill it all. The first time. The park, the distant greens, across the road I see her face. How I spoke, captured her, only to be captured by her. She hates me for it. Her words, she swoons me, yet I know I am nothing to her. Lazed beings, I cleaned and cook, I am nothing. I love her soul, this dream, the dream beyond my control. A runner in my living room, a dog in the carpet…

…away from her hands, still in her soul. The showered figure in the road, my love, live, the pavement. All eaten by the fog, nightmare, terror, strapped hands, knife to my stomach. Pig fat raped and ripped, cut and cut. Fatty dreams I see. Breathe. My chest rippling like a stone. Like. Stone. Moving stillness and quiet dreams I search for love and live. The Dublin roads and Vienna halls. My life. Liberty. Dreaming of laziness. My wife. Wife soon, the pink house, pink and brown, the white pool, black tea, the flashing sights, melting faces, buzzing, buzzing, the car, everything spiraling, my dreams rejecting me as I scream in agony. Be free of the shackles. Be in the shackles, live our life, explode in anger, let him take her mind. The mind, Blooming days I cheered alone to Joyce. Let me. Shut the door, quiet the doors, breathe. A boom. A boom. The piano, silent, back to where, back. Trace your hair on your knees. Elbows on my legs, hands in my head, burning acid slowly across me. Blue eyes, pale fire. Doomed souls in the cracks like me…

…everything muddled for a moment. But she calls to me.

-Honey? Is the tea ready? In an instant, her voice dispels it all. The voice, quiet voice serving my silence.

-Yeah, done seeping, let me add milk and sugar. Would you like toast with yours? I call out. For a moment I lose the words before I began. Confused if my soul was real, confused if my nightmares vanished. But she spoke to me.

-Oh, no thanks, I am not hungry, maybe tonight, a bit later. Quick always in answer.

I hear her feet down the carpeted steps, the clean clothes, closeted joys. She moves down to me, the bare feet now on the tile. She stands behind me, I stir the sugar. She grabs me, she saw. I tried to hide, but she knows. She moves it round and round. Nibble in my ear, she breathes. Her pelvis against me, moving up and down. She pulls. The zipping silence. Moving in pace, moving and moving, the sound of her, quiet pleasure, a bug beneath her thumb. Moving, I breathe outwards, I motion, my nighttime thoughts brought before. Explode over the world, and bear ye the spool of the morrow, the prophet of agape, the gaping demon, open like a rose and mouth, Gape dreams, soft hands, the grip. Finish. Fin.

-Clean it up. She giggles softly as she takes her tea and sits on the couch. I begin to sob. I am happy. Sob. I clean. I clean. Be of use. Clean. She tells me to be happy, I am happy. Happy.

~

My eyes open, the day still day. The fog no longer thick, the sun now there. White, why white? I want orange. Want and want. My pants are wet, and my chest covered. I clean myself. I stand up and look out my window. The small crack, the only crack. She stands in her window. Weeping. Her tears bring me joy, the joy of sorrow. I feel the soul in me bound and beaten. I love perfection, and perfection hardly loves me. So lone, my dreams reject me. A failure even to Pessoa. With a single stop, a single flick, my tears cease, dry and cracked, my bones pause. I meet her eyes. Through the tree in front of my cracked window. The curved branches and slight gap in the world, the spinning is duly done, her soul. I can understand it all. Those eyes, the sunken eyes. Everyday. Every moment I meet me, I see it too, the look. The burden of souls. Loneliness.

The day grows hot. The arching waves of the incomplete sun casts the world in fire. Heated dread, the paleness. My skin, so pale, the bones all pushed forward, fat and bile. My routine changes. Limited fog to heat. I hardly watched; everything went black. Consumption of the soul. I feel it must be a summer month then. I cannot tell, my mind has lost track some years ago. Months that melted, the liquid wax on my chest. Days dissipating, hours of sorrow in the seas. The circle of the grandfather named time no longer sticks in my heart. A stake through, I am forlorn. No bearded soul to watch me. Consciousness without eyes I live my life. Seeing the world, stick for eyes, my Proteus, my fixation. I never open my eyes, I never see, the rocks fall into nothing.

I strip nude, my clothes bunched. Wastebasket it streams. Like rocks in the water, a time ago, I remember. Mother and stepfather, by the stones. Hot day it was, much like now, skidded peaches against asphalt, bubbling stock in the black pot.

Limbered arms and chest, tight. I rub out the knots in me. The stuff of pain, bones crack. I can hardly breathe, the room so close. I stay. Stretching my arm, my arm, my leg, my leg, my chest, my back, my neck. Stretch like rubber, cut it open, and tar pours out. Forgetting all the words spoken to me. She thought I worked too hard; thought I didn’t eat enough. I never worked hard enough; I always ate too much.

Vomit green and red, spinning brown. Around, the soul of souls. Nonsense, verbiage. She, the old she, not the new she, she was there. In my arms, away from me. I always spake, always thought of the future, of love and hope. She promised I was sane, a simple deck of cards. She hoped for a future, yet so easily abandoned me. I cannot blame her. Ink blots cannot marry. We don’t deserve it.

Mother always told me, never speak of the self, always speak of _her_ self. Question after question, show interest. Tumbling voices around the bed. The illusion was drawn. She loved the illusion, not the sobbing boy in his chest. Plucking notes and strings I was unwound. The freedom of life cursed not on me. A burden to life itself. Her hands clawed at me to run. Run and run, jump off the train. A day, so clear…

We met in the park. Bright light, the flickering wind, two of us, music of fantasy. Seventeen I was, sixteen she was. Dreaming dreams of men that are knights. I was, and am, but a pauper. She was so much more, she always deserved more. I defiled her first chance of love. She always promised. Promised words, the words, never any woe, yet she bled too, like me, alone she was, not as alone. Midday, chances of rain were gone, the crows chirped, and the bluebirds cawed. Other? Sounds of silence like screaming nightmares. Lovely she was. Together. Worldly desires put me away from heaven. The park sat across the school. The school. Time of sun. School. The sin of sun, sunny night terrors, nightly dreams. Flashing prospects, the taste of blood pulls me out, the school, park, straight mind she told me to have, changing always…


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original text, there is a section here where I experiment with formatting, having the text appear stretched out, during the shower portion. Unfortunately, ao3 does not allow this, and much of the formatting has to be omitted, on top of this.

# TREE

Soul of souls. Useless lump. My heart. I cannot smile. She needs. She is the old aged thought upon my finger, the mild captivation of being. She frowns. Always frowns. How can I help, how can I take the hatred away, my soul? A sponge. Cracked cake is eaten and nibbled. She is. Angry. Mother hates. Old love hates.

~

A large tree, wound, and thick, oak, is planted in front of my window. The window in my bedroom. Through the branches, I can make out the vague and profound whispers of the world outside. But no one can see in. A sliver, a peephole. The closest I can ever get to see it all. The tree is planted atop a knoll, tightly wound, the grass beneath the roots of the tree. I believe it to be oak. Oak, rough wood, in a place like this? Maybe. Ought to find out. Ought, always, the world ought to be, observe the external, take the perception and defile the concept, ruin the term, and take it whole. Ought, shall, must, act I will. Resign from acting I will. The stench of the beast burns my face as I stand before the tree in my window.

_Sway, sway,_

_The name you say?_

_Round, around,_

_Always the same way._

_With bones and mites,_

_I feel the land might bite._

I cannot help the ego in me. He yearns to see her, to open her wide like a dead rat, and see her. To see. Seeing the wasted spirit and crushed insect that is the woman. Tedium is her life, but she sees not tedium. Better off than man. He feels only despair. Despair, raw and uncut, her, cut and refined, tedium, polished waste.

~

I am sitting at my desk. I am holding a glass of milk. Carved milk, the sick waste in my hands. Cold and chilled the water still wet on my hands. I am facing the door, through the clouded glass the world unwinds, the dirtied skies and pink fields, browned grass is pressed before me. Mother is asleep. On the couch. Pricky succulent wrapped around her arm, the rubbered hug. The TV is loud. Blaring screams, the blaring moments. The eyes and hands that glide across the electric surface radiating the envy of life itself. I am sitting. A glass. The milk. Smoothly the white powdered substance trickles down my throat. My dried dreaded throat coated in the grimy sludge. I start to shake. I want to eat food, but mother won’t wake up, I want to scream and beat the beaten beating bruises that are beating the hearty beating soul. A time before love, the angst boils over, the boiling bubbling trinkets. The love, long and gone, not now, now the violins ring higher, the arching dream, the duckling. I want to scream, let me write with clarity, let the words flow, and let it all reduce backward, the spinning ash, stately the hands bring and ring the world, all of it ringing. My hands tracing and gripping. A crack in the cup, white dreams pouring all over me. Pouring. I want to throw my glass on the ground. Let me eat the shattered realms that break in twain, let me feel the world unwind through the aperture. What? What is it all, let me open the wrath that consumes me in terror? Let me die. Let me split my head, the open oozing soul that the anger pours from. Black and back the rotting waist is tied by a rope. My hands are ripped to my side. The opening. A light from above, the sightless vision atop the mountain of kings. The pendulum swinging through the thick spongey air. The vision fleeting, lies are we beneath the sky. The television rings. The wrath pulled upward, the rope and Atwood, the machine open. I want to throw my glass on the floor. I cry, the thick gloss of frightened tears falling from the rigid clouds. The judge swings its gavel. My hands cover my ears, and through the air, all ceases. The moment stops, linear circle, spiraling, golden eyes, my scream pulls through the air. The glass shatters, shards ripping my feet. Mother sits up. She screams. The hands reaching through the air, she blows me down, the screams and terror as I clutch my pale heart beating ever softer. My hair clutched in her loving palm, she takes me through the doors, red, white, blue, red, blue, grey, green, door, through the door the water is still, the dirt softer and sinking. Outside is a tree, tall and old. A woodpecker strikes.

_Home, I say_

_Throw, I say_

_The glass, The glass!_

_I can hear all things,_

_Noise and Noise,_

_The music is a blot,_

_The tele is a blot,_

_The A/C is a blot._

_So, throw the glass,_

_And let the Milk come,_

_And all the Vile lot!_

_Let the glass eat me,_

_My foot, My foot,_

_The man who writes,_

_Is the one to fight,_

_The man in the office,_

_Crush his skull._

_Crush the glass,_

_Let the mouse set into a lull._

~

I turn on the shower. Waiting for the hot water to rise, I stand before the mirror. The mirror, clear and faceless I stand, the speckled skin. Why a mirror? With no sense of humbled eyes, I cannot even investigate my self. I see only the perceptive understanding of my reality. Always here. My hands slide across the granite countertop as I await the water to come to temperature.

The shower. Water, pouring thickly, thinner than the blood of the Lord that falls down the drain. Always reborn each day I swear to myself to be clean, my skin rubbed and scrubbed, but the soul cannot be free! The soul, my soul, _our_ soul, is often poisoned by the mind, my mind, _our_ mind. The light comes through the dirtied window above my head, the steam beginning to rise higher and higher. Blue light through the puffed clouds that seem to swirl round and round. Why and? Why the repetitive double usage? A cliché. Poorly written man I am. Poorly written man written by a poorly born writer. I can never seem. Never, never, semen, seem. Eem. The shower is comprised of white tiles, the grout grey to it. Grey. One tile in the bottom left corner is but of a slightly darker shade, no cracks, shaded deeper. Why this one? Why is this one too dark? Perhaps all too light? Dismiss me. The shower is long, a tub too. With white curtains around it. The head is wide and sputters each time the water comes on. The water is too hard. Seems to cut babe sized holes through the skin and bones it does, yes, the skin open.

I cannot see in front of me. The fog, mist, white air, miasma, too thickly spread over my own eyes. I enter the shower. The curtain pulled back; the little stacked tower of steam that is higher than the rest of the room. Wafting into my face it makes my eyes burn. So, I push myself through it. To it. My body is whipped with the tightly bound lashes that rain down over me. Water all too hot, all too hard, all too hot, all too hard. My mind. Calming. The dropping rings of brass, the tear shaped beauty of pyrite. My only place of momentary silence in my loud life. In my much younger years I always thought of making love in the shower, oftentimes, I made love to myself. As I was turned away from all external love my soul tried to wrap itself up. But that never ends well, the heart becomes soaked up in the water so much, that the bright white roots begin to turn black, the arms pulled back in, winding up, breaking away, the foundation now rotten.

Mother knew how to plumb. Stepfather too. I plumbed a shower; we did in my youth. All I did was stand around. Through the hot summer days emptying the massive barrel of waste, the heavy thing atop my shoulder. The water always piped wrong, always standing. They decided on the house and the operations. The tile, the floor, the paint. The rugs and sheets and food and clothes and days and water and skin I wore around me. Always standing I was.

I grab my bar of soap, green, small now. I need to buy more. Always need more soap, can’t have enough, always need to be clean. Day after day the brittle porcelain and tight bums need to be washed. SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU BASTARD THE MONSTER WILL TAKE YOU ARE THE MONSTER WRITE THE FORWARD WRITE THE PLOT THERE IS NO STORY YOU RAMBLE AND RAMBLE AND CAN NEVER SHUT THE FUCK UP. PERISH LIKE THE BUG YOU ARE. I lather my body from left to right, top to bottom, my hair last. The skin is rubbed, the scabs picked, and pimples pricked as I comb over my entire body. Reaching around I move my hands through every aspect of me. With each inch I cover, the more repulsed I am. The wavy skin, the bumps, the small twig-like hairs, and the smooth moles that freckle me. Clean I am not, clean I will never be. Bending oak legs I have, bending and boiling pig stomach I have. The nonsense that comes from me. The shit cleaner than I!

My words grow faster as each thing is touched, my poked through ribs, and bouncing bulging stomach. My mind moves through the motions. My hands tracing, the rough bumped, boils of pus, and grating pig salt. Repetitive endless life, I should have hung through the branches of life, I should have pulled that trigger, I should have cut my skin deeper with that knife. Murmurs of commanding horror claw at my skin.

Slowing words, becoming garbled and warped, slower and slower as the thoughts all mold over each other. The things become melted, voice over voice, several and severed it all becomes, indistinct as everything moves. The moment of life, the aspect, amalgamations of terror. I cannot imagine. The hug I gave, the hugs and hugs, my folding body pouring over as I wrapped my arms around her. The soft echoes and silting sand that seems to be

ringing through. The silver mountain of higher peaks that poke through my trousers.

As my ears close, the voices come back, back to one, I pull them into the singular Will. Mind over it all. Over and over and over, the mind ripples. Rippling like water, the water pours over me. My hands grip my hair. Why can’t I cry? Let me. Let me cry. Let me. Please. Let. I crouch down. I pull my eyes open. I want to cry.

My eyes. Crossing over through the clear droplets that linger atop the white curtains. Voices. Voices begin. An orchestra of voices. The voices falling in unity of separation, distinct yet they hold one body. The reverberations are cast, and it echoes through the room. My eyes meet the woven fabric, stitched drip by drip, the essence of all things waxen and woven, the life of the void, all spiraling. The dropping water, decaying and flowing, through the mouth, through the drain. I feel it all. My legs bent, the skin around my knees pulled tight, every hair lit ablaze by the sparkle of the clouded water that pours. The hands over me. My arms cross in my hair, fingers atop hair. The singular movement, riveting. All of it. My eyes, in my socket.

A large tree, wound, and thick, oak, is before my eyes. The window before my ego. Through the branches, I can make out the vague and profound whispers of the winding grassless meadow before me. A sliver, a peephole. The closest I can ever get to seeing it all in all of its glory, the yellow dirt, the large crag before the invisible sun. The tree is planted atop a knoll, tightly wound, the grass beneath the roots of the tree. The open expanse of light is shaded by the pale blue, a cloud looms overhead, large, the shadow beneath me. My home is gone; mother is gone. I remember this. A wee string in my hands, hoisted and tied atop the thick arms of soul now gone. A choice. Mother helps me. Her hand guides the string, the knot, over, around, around, around, around, through and tight! Gripping. Thrown, she helps me to my crown. Trumpets played for me as the velveted arms roll up my skin. Twine around me. Mother rose, Father rose, Son rises too. As the world falls away beneath my feet, all is created from nothing, the inky world breaking away as slumber pours over him. Him. He. I. Slumbering eyes, the tide of clear water pours through the field, water, over and over, washing all away, Father hoists me higher. Water turns to fire, burning the field and burning the tree. Terror of flames, the licking blue flames, the fire that spreads, has spread too late, for the rope is drawn, my lips purple, and my eyes cemented shut.


	6. FIVE

# FIVE

I am dreaming, yet I was, yet I am, yet my body stirs silently beneath the bright blue moon. I step forward, through a clearing, giving way to an illuminated grove. Before me rests softly, sleeping, a fair maiden. Towering even when reclined, her body arches gently about in unison with the delicate flowers rounded beside her. Her gentle pale skin brightening the world. The spirit clawing forward, her pale-yellow hair adorned by a crown of white and red flowers. Her eyes, opening like the swooning edge of a barbed caterpillar. Her body radiating in Germanic, and Grecian nude beauty, power of prowess, her faint pale love trickling from her pores. Seven feet tall she rests, her being, so powerful, the gentle sounds of humming, the buzzing mist of the Universe itself. Herself. The world beneath her, the world is her. Larks sing the sweetest songs for her gently. The sweet, sweet songs. The flowers, how they turn to her instead of the sun. Her breasts, so delicate, the tips, pink and delightful, everything about her so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, eternal. I stand nude before her, beneath her, she is so far above my disquieted eyes, the cobblestone path of the world behind me, the dirt-soaked world before me. As a wise man once said, as he said, what did he, what did, the word, on my tip, tip, I am slipping. She sees me stand before her; her slumber disturbed by my babyish sobbing. No anger upon her like so many before, simply a rose coated, pink stretch of her wee, thick, plump, and boundless, dutiful, wonderful, rounded, wet, soft, delicious, and coated cake-like, with soft bouncing joy, set of lips. The profundity resting within the harpsichords of sweet songs. See her arms open wide, with the tilt of her head, with the tilt, the opening of the burning heart, her smile, she swooned me with such grace. A mere babe I became in her arms, so large, the power before them, the wonder of the dancing leaves, and spinning petals, all before her, now me as well, the orchestra, symphony of delight, the wondrous strings and cymbals. Always music. Always, in everything, the milk of the universe brought forward like music. So, my muse, my wondrous muse, encapsulated me, I, her wee broken jester in a grey film-coated box.

Her heart, before me, in her cage so thin, bouncing with the falling drops of the world’s water. My head atop her bosom, I am in her arms. She pulls me downwards and we lie in the dewish orange poppies, the bees floating about, licking clean the pollen from our skin as the flowers touch us. The sun is above us, pale, and no longer frightful, no longer a burning beast about my eyes, now it is like her. An open eye of dominant seduction, open lips of sweet harmony, an open soul of endless ecstasy. Around me, beneath me. Beneath me I feel her bosom, her firm and plushy coated bosom of splendor. Thus, she guides my head with her long fingers to the peak of her breast, to the pinkish mount of white sparkled snow, to the flattened tip plateau of cavernous wonder, to the bright rose watered wave that crashes on the white sand. From her flows the milk of all things, milk sweeter than any before it, the honey and sugar of love itself, how white it is, white and powerful, pouring, flowing into my mouth. My soul searches, my soul dried, the husk of hatred, now bestowed upon it a wonder of flowing milk, so, again. So. The minute drops coat my lips as I readjust, the soft sound of delight squealed from her quiet mouth, the giggle, soft, a mother she is, the mother, the mother to feed all souls who need it, the mother to swoon all babes who cry alone each night, who cry for the sweet succor of her holy milk.

As I crumble awake, now in my bed, in my blackened room with a sole strip of light, tears stifle my face, and words leave my parched lips one by one, uttered in hymnal praise:

I heard the world sing to me

As I lie silently awake.

Sweet songs she did thus sing,

Things that bitterly sting.

Things of

Birds and buzz-ed bees,

The chopped hands,

Grazing her lands.

Loving love, a time, a place,

A year in which man did not race,

Nor did he last.

At last, alas,

Miseree overfilled its glass.

Ending spiral, the world over womb,

The pecking drips of dripping doom.

Lick the cheek,

Check the heart,

So, so, endless.

Kiss, a peck, a peeve, a peep,

The tired eyes that search…

Searching eyes glazed atop, now lost,

Losing the post of the world.

Fling ye own stones if ye he has bled,

Bleeding over and over bedding sheets

Now, no longer,

Known.

I fall back, and my eyes close again.

_~_

I, I, I, I, I, five, the ego, the world about me, the, ego. Always here in my bedroom, even when I am but, in another world, my toes still curl inward atop this carpet. Beating, bleeding. Words to go in and out, always, seen like smoke, felt like God, forgotten like everything else. Five more moments until, till, tilling, keep your head on straight. Keep it.

I crack my back from twisting side, beside. My knuckles aching, the world, worldly world. Just think straight for one moment. Straight. Coherent. Remember a moment to clear your mind.

“Tumult of toil, the tootling skies open yonder over the pale kin of mine own hate. The open black mass of spin, spin a do aroo, the spoon of chrome. World of clouds, kingdom, the kingdom screeching beast, fleeing and fighting over youth, your days have gone through the green grassed and ghoulish shore. Drying eyes of blank fears the leading mystery of my motherly mother the screeching, screech deceit. Stinking skunk I walk over the top of creaking beams the dried blueish swoon, sween, sweetly night went, gone, goft, gimless. To touch the sun of the morning now man must die upon his peak of rest. The shaking car in which nightmare of horror, the horror dreamt of the stained purple carpet, the days of rocking horse and rocking knocked moments, we live, mother touches. Touching touches, the black-brown bruises spreading stop the spider of, of, of. Cracking, my bones split and spilling, morn fog of mourning days, Electra, of Electra, my mommy, mommy, dad cast in marble the marbled grace o’er topping blades of Caesar in roughing rolled dreams. The prose and terms all to be screamed abound a bite, biting bight the world, sword, alliteration, my friend of friends, kingly night, the dragon was slain, mommy, O mommy, her breasts abend, beating, the head and screams, the tongue in mine own mouth, mommy no, mommy, oooh the grassy grown grease of grease fired propane, days upon the sun, picking of fecal decay, the cigarette burns my skin, the rape of Babylon, mine own soul, smoking, smoke soul.”

No, no, no, restrain the course of mind, now is not the peak of all things, not the height the reader shall expect, not even halfway into the winding tightness of the straight blue string. Not, yet, no, restrain.

_Breathe, Breathe,_

_In, In,_

_Breathe, Breathe,_

_Out, Out,_

_Again, Again,_

_Five, Five,_

_Love, Love,_

_Mine, Mine._

A tear wanders up my cheek, kissing my forehead as I lie upside down. I think to myself, “If life is suffering, then I am above all, living.” Potential for something I was always told, a lie perhaps. Moments, inertia, the mass of my spine twisted round and round, pop, pip, pop. The snapping curl, the snap.

Deathly, dismal, repetitive nonsense. Music to make a man scream. The ambiance of angst, always like the clear smog of days gone by. Why can’t I seem to live in the present, departing from the tracks of days before? I see her, my love, her hair, the love of all, the titular Her. Where wherhehrhheheeheheheh. I cannot think straight. Bubbled, bubbled. I see eyes burning themselves deep into my skin, my skin, now web, burned through the plastic. A barrier, barrier to something that spirals openly. In my youth, I was much like now. Before, then, the time, I was always angry at something, agitated, the rushing hormones taking me below the never-ending slope of hatred. A knot in my stomach, the dark lines about me kept me stirring. But even then, I was but the same, oft disquieted. My book of faith, that one of disquietude.

Breathe, the world, aether flesh. Brushing best wishes. The hand of hers. A girl. I recall. A moment.

My class, a class, long ago, three, four, five, six, somewhere, a time, always sick. She sat across from me; my eyes trained on her in the vague limp gestures of my shadow. I was hated by her; I am sure of it. Her hands, the lovely hands. A woman can grasp nearly any man, and soon, he shall be hers. Long and oil-coated fingers she had, nay like caramel. The sweet delight, the long auburn nails. The wonder and grace of a simplistic lifestyle. Mathematics the subject was. She was beautiful. Like a statue, I watched, her grace, the wondrous folds of her bod, the tiring eyes she too thus carried, green, and brown, crimson like lips. Her smile always granted to the fellow man of greater stature. Me, my waste, the clippings of boiled fat, never deserved her kindness, not that I received any, to begin with. I felt like a shred of dust beneath her delicate life, her sweet life of violence. Father abused her I must recall. The bruises on her slightly hair coated back, poking through and through the tips and tops of her tight black shirt. Grace, her grace the whole thing, wrapped and soiled, twin about her, eyes looking at my own, eyes, the fear, cast in dear, I can imagine her nude, the power, power, her. She was one of many, I yearned for the touch of anyone, one woman to steal me from myself. She never came, until now. Always I was pulled back within, my life cast like dirt around the basin of their feet always, always. Universal, sole. The base of every woman, flashing eyes. More to become.

I decide to rise from my bed. Slowly, my legs pop, wait, was I standing? I move towards the door, the image of the living room flashing in my mind. A quiet room, a single seat to hold me, nothing else, no being in the walls, when there, between the fine, cracked skin of animals long gone now, one can hear the screams from behind the wall.

My door opens, the light from the small crack fading into the shadow of the hallway. It grows, growing, stretching, twisting dreams, the room itself, taken away, the black ash, smoke. Everything always smokes. A bird chirps before it dies. One final screech of pleading forgiveness. Do not think of what you are to do, do not taste the tinge of sour punishment you are to receive. The beating drums, ambiance again, the candlelit desire now is gone, I want to go back. The life of my house, turning below, the souls all want out, from my skull, clawing open. Keep on, walk. Walk, never eat again. The cobblestone wall turns with moss, a blackened beetle runs across it, the water drips as a woman of a ghostly voice sings some miles away. A howling moon. Beside me is a torch, wooden. I grab it with my right hand. Looking down to my paper-thin beastly claw, the letters “S.V.”, carved neatly on it. The torch is heavy, the dark wood warmed by the light of this fire, a matchstick of great proportion. Adorned upon my hip rests a mighty mere dagger, small and twisted, the blade, cracked. My clothes, tattered, green and brown. Loose and coated without twine. I see a single door once more, wooden nightmares leading further down. The black age atop the door, the black, now stone reddened nightmare. A drip of great size, creaks. The lurking fears. Something from the mind of wrath, Satan, the writer. I press it open, the moss and stone now gone, only before me, the hallway.

Here? Was I not here? In the hallway? Again perhaps…it grows, growing, stretching twisted dreams the room itself, taken away, the black ash, smoke. Everything always smokes. A bird chirps before it dies. Wait? Did I? The mind grows heavy, the words, my words, slow again? Typed again? Wrongly placed ink perhaps? Wrong. Wrong. All wrong. Life made by the doomed soul, he, the monster, he- One final screech of pleading forgiveness. Do not think of what you are to do, do not taste the tinge of sour punishment you are to receive. No, I cannot, I was, again? Doomed, am I? The beast about me? A circle? Reddened eyes, my haste never ends, the door, where? Living room, chair, cracked, must again? I am going forward, I take m- The cobblestone wall turns with moss, a blackened beetle runs across it, the water drips as a woman of a ghostly voice sings some miles away. A howling moon. Beside me is a torch, wooden. I grab it with my right hand. Looking down to my paper-thin beastly claw, the letters “S.V.” name? Name? What? No torch. There, there, the life of my own, the dreaming desire. My name? More than? Recall a life before the depths of this place? Her. Recall her. I see her, her beauty, her there across the road, she calms me so, calming eyes I wait for her, life going and going until that final moment in which we love so lovingly so, love the loving gift of drifting eyes, we too- I see a single door once more, wooden nightmares leading further down. The black age atop the door, the black, now stone reddened nightmare. A drip of great size, creaks. The lurking fear. Something from the mind of wrath, Satan, the writer. I press it open, the moss and stone now gone, only before me, the hallway. The hallway. End, please, end, end, never, never words always spinning down the water coated, wax-soaked rag placed within my mouth. A mouse drowning in its own urine. Ur. I. Ne. What? My door opens, the light from the small crack fading into the shadow of the hallway. It grows, growing, stretching twisted dreams the room itself, taken away, the black ash, smoke. No. I run down the hallway. Get out of my head. Get out. Get out. Stop writing, please, kill the man, the man who made me. I am running. No! There is no I! there is nothing here! I hate you! Please kill me! Please end the story! Let me love her! I take my hand and cover my eyes, yet I still see everything, the voices growing louder with each step of my heart. The death rattle of a thousand men, raging in my finite skull, the bone plates cracking, letting out the world. The men bashing from within, the women from without. My hand grips my skull, clawing into my scalp, drops of blood and flakes of skin coat the underside of my long nails, clawing and ripping to let the pressure out. My legs convulse, I take to the stairs with ferocity and I descend upon the open air of my living room. Resting, facing, the wall, beneath it. The single chair, grasping skin, tightened hairs. I sit in it. Beyond it I go, the drumming terror gone, my life, now another, a moment. Another caricature that reduces to nothingness. Her. Her.

“Something is off today. I can feel it. The jungle is swamped with rain, the gooks could be anywhere.

We’ve been in this place for months now. Not a single word has been said to me. Just a slight nod of the end, the sharing of cigarettes. Some pills too.

It’s Monday today, the first of the month. 1,1. I haven’t slept in weeks, my eyes can barely stay open, and the only thing that’s keeping them that way is the fear of getting my damn head blown off. That’s war huh? The same fears, the same jungles, the same swamp ass. I walk back and forth in camp, my pistol in my hand. What pistol is it? This guy’s never seen war. _What?_ My body pours every ounce of water out of my skin, in, out. Sweat and blood mix on the surface of my damp and itchy skin.

I hear a rustle on the ground, I shoot. It was a beetle. Everyone jumps up. They realize. They go back to their shallow graves. The fucking mud. The fucking mud just seems to pour down from the black sky and pale trees. Is there even a war? Did they forget us here in this fucking jungle? Is there even a jungle? Maybe we are in a fucking desert, or the streets of New York. All the same place to me. Equal chances of getting shot.

I run behind a tree and vomit. When I look up, I see a pair of yellow eyes fall into line through the hazed bass line. The music plays again, a bullet goes by my head. My hair gets singed. I fall to the ground.

Before it happens, it happens. The radio cuts into the rain, the company fires back. A grenade gets thrown. The rabbit sees us, but we can’t even see the trees three feet away. The sounds of blood and the taste of explosions rattle my skull. I’m still on the ground. I pick myself up and sit behind a fallen log. The drum starts again. The war beats in your ear as the smell of Chinese weapons works its way through your body. When the smoke hits your heart, something happens to you. Some men just get hit by the smell and keep firing, nice and calm, getting high from the broken fingers of workers. But some men, some eventually get a hit of smoke that’s too big to handle. These men go fucking crazy. Like a cat snapped in half they scream like a monster. I stand. I scream. A screech that hides beneath the waving horror of the falling rain and ceaseless fire, a scream that hides beneath the waves, a trembling horror that strikes fear into your own heart.

I take a CAR-15 from the guy next to me. There is no honor for the silent men. I run into the hellfire. I run into heaven. The chorus fades in, and everything slows down. I feel the smoke wrapping around the rough edges of my brain; my neurons aren’t even firing anymore.

The rain stops midair, and I bob back and forth with the green waves against the concrete pier. I’m there for hours, with bullets going past me, screaming louder each time one goes by. I get shot in the head. I was standing for six seconds. Now, I’m on the ground. The back of my head is split open, my skull full of splinters and rain. My mouth falls open and everything goes back to normal. The drips of rain pool in my warm mouth, cooling it slowly. 

The firefight stops. My body is left there. Some of the soldiers look down at me. They chuckle. I try and scream at them, but it’s all muffled. The night turns into day, and I swallow the water. Days past, weeks go by, months too. The vines grow up my arms, the plants fill my skin. My flesh starts to get picked at, bit by bit, either by bugs or animals. I’m a pile of bones covered by decades of plants and dirt. No one remembers my name, I never stopped screaming under the dirt.”

I lean back in my chair and my mind is jolted forward. My soul risen, cast in angst once more, the drip of dripping sweet sweat, the sharp chords, and burning flesh. I stand silently, tears cascading as my breath shuts me open and closed, the heaving sounds of terror on my face. My head hurts, the ache, the tearing open of my bone, in the middle of my face, the disease.

I check the clock, but I don’t read it. It’s night, I know that much. I walk outside barefoot into my backyard. The lights are already off in the neighborhood. I exhale softly, rubbing my hands on my forearms. Tittering noises, the turning of dials, the click of the empty gas light filling the world tonight. A looming desire to die. The grass is wet. _Rain?_ I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it should rain now.

I sit down slowly, my back sliding over the green soaked grass. The moon, milken white, like my love, such a delight. No stars, no clouds, nothing to obscure you now my love, you have grown from child to woman, your age, the whispers of your bosom. So, wonderful, waxing, now full, waning, as all soon shall be. The sound of cars spinning down the concrete behind the depth of a tree linger in my mind, the void swallowing the bright yellow lights, I hear it so well.

~

I wake up, the sun burns my face. I sit up swiftly, the eyes, the eyes, the eyes, I see them, the terror. They all fall behind when they see me so near. I prick myself open, standing with panic, the eyes fall behind. I run into my house, the door slammed shut, I try to tack the curtain back, but the tack slips from my hand. I drop it. Slipped. Slippy thing, the tack lands quietly. I cut myself with my rush of terror. I run from the door, the new door, black, wood, a rat skitters in my stomach.

I hear voices warble softly behind me, women and men, the child and sweet scorn, words atop words. Terror demanding the eminence, demanding, everything always now, the narrator must be concise. I run, my feet slipping, I almost tumble like a week kitten!

I go into my bedroom. I roll under the bed, and I hear the front door open. The feet come up the stairs, the guns rack. Shaking skin, my trembling eyes, the singular pupil, spinning tides. A boot running up and near, now, now, my voice mutter, release, no, please. The door is kicked open, dust is thrown upward, a clear man, face black and close, he meets me. A bullet paws through the air, reaching me, spanning between the infinite monads, through the trees of the air, through the ocean and ponds of these trees, through the fish within the ocean and ponds within these trees within the air, and through the cracks of scales of the fish within the ocean and ponds within these trees within the air. Through it all, straight atop my left eye. A single burst, leaving me now, years immediately unwound.

I slip out from beneath the bed, no noises. The rat gets loose.


	7. RED

# RED

The draw of man’s first breath, like a gun, loaded with dirt. I rise. My blood pools on the tip of my hands. Mother ought to be here soon. Story? EH? The? No, mother, she went away, some eons ago. Time is but my ball of spiked yarn. Many, many, oh many.

A drop of water sings from the small slit in my cell, singing in the air with a whistle, singing on the ground with a thud. A single slit for my world to come through. A single drip. Falling. The discordant rumbles of beast fills me, all from the edges of my mind, the cell always trembling as the boots run outside. Marches. Marching. Waiting. I have been here for 500,000,000 days. The clink of my shackles pulls me from my momentary lapse of unattachment to this reality. I am writing these words in blood. Poetry, like a man, a great one indeed, ought to be written with a drop of blood. But life with a single drop is not a life at all. This poem, this story, this endless murky tide of my life shall be written with every bit of my blood. My pyre, my mark upon the biographies that were never written. Never written, but perhaps read! I have been stuck here behind the ash of these cinder blocks for a near eternity.

But upon the end of the marching, the silence of the screaming woe of these men, these men about these prison walls, cease, they cease from within, and from without, I am free to sway amongst the silence. Amongst the pictures of waves cast forward and back, the green grain splashing at the base of the brown birds, stuck upright. My love standing firmly, me, a malformed knight, one not of faith, one not of resignation, but a knight no less. The silence of the larks casts my lovers shadow atop the world itself. Her beauty, the wondrous beauty, here, I shall draw her for all to see. The beauty, her, my blind love, blind only of me.

My masterpiece! Cast on the grey brick, the intricacies, the depth, could you not see her? My dear, the dear of all great loves!

Mother tell. Mother, she. I cannot write of her, wasted blood better spent upon. Other things.

I dream but of the shot. Jungle fever. Ripping my skin in twain, torture, endless. The rippling waters of distracting noises, the noises, they cast me over into the range of rage. The poet always dies when ink is set unto paper. The author always dies when his name is penned on the book.

I begin from the summit of the mountain. The wandering desire to die from the tip of the ice. Iceberg peak ripping me open. A massive. I stand inside of a clock, a wee child, babe. Ticking faces and dripping desires running from the endless base of the clock itself. The endless time, endless droning, there must be an end, the phenomenon comes unto the grandest of all silences for it speaks once, but the noumenon always speaks in silence. The great desire, my eyes flipped beside themselves, white facing front when the face of God, the ticking beat, the rhythm of life itself is cast in front of me. As a child there I sat, praying for the moment not to end, shivering in every way of all time. The time in which I could spend being a youth, enjoying my motion, the thing that would be ripped from the depths of my young soul. Yet here I still sit, beneath the endless grip of the ticking God, the clock of marbled maple skin, the desire to.

Clicking bells ringing out as now the clock ends, but the clock begins anew. A new clock, the bell to feed, the men with twisted spines scurry from the barn, the hair coated in puberty, the hair, caught between the grinding gates, the ringing bell bringing us all, the luncheon time of man is but the pulling of the lever. What it means, no one quite knows.

We pick and peck, the dripping feed dropping downward as we eat the grain. The only time we are let from our cells, the time to eat. But so, the bell begins and squeaking chirps and cheap tricks of tricking tripes trick the tripping man to suicide! We clamor for freedom, the moment we are fed. But only ten of the twelve are to eat. The two, me of the two, the only of the one, are cast aside. So, we slop forward the bits of pebbled skin that are ripped off. Man was once free to stand by man they say. They say, as I eat from the flaked skin and rotting lice that chips away at my soul. This, this, oh, yes, this, indeed, this, this is, this, oh yes, this, this is man’s daily life. The dream of Proteus, whipping seas, and closed eyes amongst the beach. So we are. A dream without a fist, the generation cast asunder, the two of twelve, the one of one. The pig-like swine of the man designated to die a death not even fit for the swine itself.

Back inward we all tumble. Food fed, we are before our wall. I am running out of blood, my fingers rubbed bare and smooth against this concrete attitude, the wall, red, red, no longer grey. My enchantress beckons me. Her, the single slit of life, no more wasting words as I look down. The tumbling pits. I cannot write. No more, no longer, I wish not to create a man who shall resent me.

But sanity is the fleeting force of all of us. Perhaps it was too strong for me to hold onto, or perhaps? No perhaps. I tire. I tire over it all, over the red rooms, the red soul, the red mire, the red lips (both sets), the red desire, the red blood, the red, I tried, I tire, the red. Where shall I tumble to next?

I cannot cease yet, no, I must meet the other, the face beyond my reflection, the face in the guttural repetition of reality, I must meet the green grassy savior to cast away this red. The red ridden beetle that crawls within a reverse parabola endlessly, each time, meeting a meeting, the snake of angst eating his skin. Lord, please, the animals, a woman, I hate them, all of them, men, amen, dem, deem, me, women, all. Damn my soul shall ye now. Damn me.

With one motion the door to my cell flies open, the red bricks fall away, now with light, I see them painted black. _Black._ One motion, everywhere, always, one, the unity. A hallowed screech sounds. No one stands before my door. The light brightens on my face. Walls falling. Chains, gone. My skin, still stained through the small grooves, stained deep and wide, the black and red. I step outward into a bright field pasted with resonation of birds and bees. A swooning sound of chaos long-departed fills my soul. The buzzing ceases. The sound of pain, the nocturnal exposure is gone.

A sweet hum of brass strings ring out into the open air. An apple of immense size looms in the center of it all. A woman, lone, two women, alone. Both standing before the apple, before me. One taller than the other, both shorter than I. Brown hair adorned on them both, mother, and a woman. My woman, the one. Across. Pick I must. But. But. Both eyes steer silently across me, both cast in silk cloth, I, myself, nude.

A choice must be made, the signpost reads to me aloud. I touch one, my mother, a flash of sights, so wondrously bright, it falls in front of me. The moment past. These images, all, just proceeding and receding.

A sundry morning, full of oft tired eyes, full of dreams and hopes, and scents of wizardly inclinations. The handful hopes, pinned to my wall. Photos and drawings, men and people whom I adored greatly. All atop The Wall, gleering over me, behind my back, over, and beyond. The eyes of a German Soul, the chest of a Japanese Soul, the hair of a French Soul. Endless bounds and Dutch tinkerers laugh quietly behind me. Across the board, here in my room, safe from endless disease and the pandering mass of pity and terror. Freedom in the quiet moments in my room beneath The Wall, here I am on my bed, staring at the photos I had pasted.

Mother caressing, her voice, so shrill, cutely cutters, my knife blade is woe. One morning, yes that morning, the sundry morning once more, back and back, that morning, the morning in which the eaoo babe sung in my head trickling all way down over to my stomach, that one.

Foggy. My eyes closed softly, a fluttered butterfly-like blue swirled spiral atop my head. My house then was quaint and small, a blue-coated thing positioned in a mountain. Between a low peak and a high peak, a winding road spanning from our house, down the mountain sides into the town below. It was early in the morning, yes it was. The turning and boiling waves of shoal scented fog came plummeting forward, over the high peak, spreading fingers throughout the thin blades of rolling grass. A sharp wind, a quiet wind, one to dance through the soul of the everyman and never slow even for a moment. Never for a moment. Mother was still asleep, no sounds stirred from her room, no movement. I would be late to school soon. She drove me to school every morning, her, my mother. Her eyes would always tire as they spread across the road before us. Resentful she seemed, resentful of me, of the money and the ink spent on me. It was an hour after. After we should have left. My heart began to lift itself upward, commanding me to wake her. As I rose, lifted, rose, rising, my legs, bent straight, I sat back down again. My mind filled with tired thoughts and deep brown streams. Tired. Mother needed to be awake, awoken. Her, so, I walked. Fear running and prancing, the fire cast in stone. A sword pierced through my chest, mother, oh (always oh, like the sweet horrid poet) mother, the sweet woman bathed in smells of roses, open your eyes, please, be peace, I pray, I _prayed_ , mother. So, with a knock, then, with a knock, she stirred. A groan, a grumbling beast, the green-scaled dragon of plum skin rose from her bed, the swaying sound of her stomp filled my chest. The screaming, my name called, mother, her screaming, the cause to my now often frequent desire to die came to my face. An old wooden door, flung open, her, standing, nude, angered, a brow lowered, the sharp teeth coated in her hatred for herself showed, and shined. Mother, breasts open, the things once suckled so gently, mother, her hand, thrown into my face, a shattering sound of doom, so I fell backward, falling, a spiral forming, mother, the bruise of the daily life. Mother. My back met no ground, yet I was falling, dreams cascading, hopes and comfort, the tongue that once graced mine in her drunken stupor, mother, my back, mother, a black void enveloped me, and for a moment, silence. Then in the next, a voice appeared. A. Then two, the ringing of voice after voice, mother calling, father, a man never known, mother. My soul ripped and split, the smell of rotten corn, mother. The spinning void is what I was left with, and from these images, I, now, bring forward myself, back to the apple, the light of the house, the light of the road, the light of the peak, so high, never so low, the time and grass, the ringing wind, all spinning away, fading back to back, back to the reddened desire of mother’s thievery.

_Bore,_

_The whore._

_The red tight whore._

_Anger me, anger my mother._

_Feel hatred, like no other._

_I see, the sea,_

_And silent springs._

_Be one with me,_

_Never flee!_

Before me, no longer the singular mother and lover of my own soul, the mere reflection, now, before, nonsense. The scribble, who is before you? Answer clearly. Her, just her, my mother, gone, the shriveled stories of bosom and yellowed milk. Now, her, my love, the loving desire of fretless desire, no scorn, no mistake, her, just always. The tired eyes of her soul drip on me so, the reflection and endless reality of her brings me to the height of the stone-faced ecstasy. Life, the fluttering desire, life, the leaf twirling in the endless void, a mere leaf, shifting in disquietude. Yet no more, my thoughts, dripping towards the center of all things.

My new love now before me, after my awakening and recollection, still stands nude, her breasts heaving outward, the slight pulse of her heart shaking in her chest, much like the silk ribbon wafted through the dark stage. Her body, _the_ body, the rippling water thrown from me, the explosive destruction of her expanse, an infinite chasm of beauty. My eyes trace upon her lightly clad hips, much like the evening through her window that I wandered through with such loving lust, my eyes, much like a hand, touching her.

The succor of her, the pale skin, a matchbook in the rain, ablaze, my nails deep within her skin, hoisting her high above, the smile in her, I have seen it. Always in a dream, yet verily I say that she shall smile for me now, once I am beyond the scope of my terror and delight in the evening.

I dream of her, slipping down my slippery slope of sprawled and slit open skin, glass shards within me, deathly ill hoped dream. But within this dream, yes, this one, it stands with difference to any other. Before me, everything is painted in a film, a deep dark film, a grunged surface, the stifling scream, the lungs filled with dirt, flying fists and erotica are now no longer aesthetic, but vile, but cruel. Here, when I see the light I do not tremble, for when the light subsides I have walked forward from the depths of my mind, and I see her, standing, waiting for me, beyond me, standing in the grassy evergreen world, the sounds and delicate blades of the days of yore, the pouring sounds of thick piano chords deep within me, my heart, now filled with white blood, no longer inky, I become more. And here she is, before me, the wonderful eyes she has, here in this dream, this reality, the causing factor and form, the phenomenal immediacy of life is her, is love, the universal. But there, beyond this infinite plain of my thoughts and the walls that surround my finite mind, she smiles without reason, she smiles upon her wicked father, the fattened beast, the ink on a page, the other, her mother, the woman who silently abides by the smell of her delicate grapes, the red crushed hopes washed away in her swirling cup, but she still smiles before this all, smiles in stupidity. For how can one smile when one does not know the self fully? I saw that those who smile and do not understand the cause of their reality are not happy, but instead are lied to beyond belief. Yet I applaud these many, the men and women of mist, those who can smile yet those who are not within their depths. For I wish to smile. I wish to feel her pressed firmly against my body, to feel her breath within my lungs as our souls cross hands, I wish, I wish I could smile, even for a moment, even, just. Each time I see her, her, I know it is tiring, to hear of her so much, let me find myself, yes, yes, yes, her, duly her, I see her lips, wait, let me, retrace, where, right. Her lips, her lips. No... _the_ pursed lips toward me. Remember the dream, no longer there. Her figure, clad in, clad in what? What was it? Oh, her. Which did she? Her face, no reducing, no please, do not fall into dust. Please, there recall. Remember, see her. She shall love me even if I forget, for I have forgotten. That I am sure, but I must stand for her, now forevermore, I must stand above them all, above my reflective creator, above my destructive mother, I must live, for love, and nothing more


	8. FOUR

# FOUR

Soft rippled cells, the endless dream of watering cans that open me open, yes, they are true. I wake now, the rumbling toiling bubbled desire to rouse me again. How many of the satires so often told begin within the man cast in his toney temple of waking? Wake to sleep, the runriverun past the dream, yes, his dream, me, the mimic of his dream. The running, pacing feet, gone galore, the doom of the life that is but the waking action, yes mhm, yes, the tired dog fixated in the inwards of the smoked mind, at in a box, gunshot, gone, shot. Yes, reverend, desire the fire, fired mind shot now I crave the craved taste of sugary delle, the running ripple, rippled skin, why my mind the skin of her, skin, tight, the barrier and open corpse handled wanton being. Black leaf boiled gain, gain each morn, craving lips, pursed teeth beneath the shit stretched steel trapped magnetic womb. Mother, mother, mum, mummy, always her in my mind, why cannot the man I am, reflective tomb, and reflective desire I am, why cannot my ego deny her, the misted one. The one who cucked and was but the femme dream, the one who raped me, raped, rapped nails, her arm about me, the needle of glass-eyed toe tilled frogs toeing the tilled field, the wheat in the womb, her, her, her. Mother, mother dreaming desire, open and over, the English language my endless tomb, wording and words, words, and wording, why cannot, why cannot, why cannot? Moaning moan, moan, repeated, repeated delete the word, my knife, knife based bissed filled the wonderwondrouswondeorus light. Restraining mind, finitude, red apple, the bitter, taste of succulent sweat, sweet, sweat, oh, sweat, sweet. O yea the yeah, tea done boiling, I, the light of my eyes looked, stirring sugar taste of drugged dreams I shall complete mind on shambled shack the now lost long lost, lived green emerald pilled bottle scuffed in trash drain, sleeping me, the me, no, no, he, dumped the duped, release, my tomb, tomb, tomb, he knocks for the sharp teeth that are against me. Tasting powdery kegs to keep the endless joyous occasion of the blasted mind at bay, yes that, the powdery, powdered machine to drain me free, the ego reborn, me, the new man without this powdered concoction of endless oils and effortless toiled bubble skin! So now I sip, sip my sippy hot heated drinker drunking drink! YES, YES! Oh, my numerous sorry words for ye, sorry words, the me, I get oft mean when the me of then, the not me now, the ego of the previous entity, goes upon his rampaged ranged, the tell telling tales of heart and mind to repeat the endless desire to doomy own arms the red cocked rocket, the goo gizz jizz, the, oh my, now, I am weak, weakening, no longer poetic, my manic, mania, the fronted slant of my mind, endless sentence, no periods, no end, the endless, Penelope! Yes, like her! Like Penelope! Penelope the dream, the running horn, no, my words not as sweet as hers, one new cannot be canon, no, no canon, merely disintegration. I search the mind now and time, the light and glitters the screeching scratches of British souls against my eyes, my house, filled no longer with ashed trashes, a woman knocked and rapped her boney fingers, oh but yes, I split and spliced her scalp open and over, wee, wee, hee-hee, her skin, the wonderful warmth she lent, the tasting bite I took of her, selling me home, I snatched her open! Snatched her skin, pulled tight, fire over the ends of her nails, boiling tips, like me in the sun! wonderful things to ponder in the morning green grass yellow life-giving sun, relinquish, oh my tea! Yes, sip, sip, sip, sip, sippy, the thoughts of her wondrous open wide apple, mmm sweeter than that etoile bird, the nails stretched thinly over my eye! Womb her warm drip a drop, the previous night, I was begininnning I must stand I said, standing atop my lies coveted with golden riddled sands! Default my riddle, and hang like me, oh yeah, the testing, testing, hanging delight, my throat, covered now in boils since she wasn’t truly that much ripe, bounded woman, my ripe now, she was going to hurt me, ripe no, ripe, she was going to kill me with the expunging ripped blade of a goldened cross and take me above, no, not ye, no ripe, not the ripened wizard of the waxing moon, they all laugh “Wax? Wane?” Yes, me, the man who speaks without glee, the tasteless piano, much better than I, for the piano can also sing, dance, and perform mathematical operation, but me, the man, man with no glee, the man, glued over and open, the man, me no longer, the one who cannot even sing, write, read, dance, play, laugh, make others smile, taste sounds of chords, consider another’s thoughts, help others, write well, read well, write poetry, write stories, write, I cannot, mm yes my creator, me just the reflection of bronze powdered masturbating scum, yes, masturbation, he is not pure, neither me, me just the reflective abstracted ambiguation of his mind, the factor and facet of his mind, the desire, the dream, I cannot be better, so I am much bitterer, he is lesser, me, the ideal, the creator less than I, for he, cannot even live, me, I, name, the reflection his surface filled reflection, the chromium sink like eyes peering from the upward rubberize drain, he cannot, no, he, the dreamy like phantom, the bearded bastard, the man lost without a cause, the loveless wine, pig pickled design, ye he, the mind without man, the rumpled rippled skin, oh yes, him the bastard, he cannot even live! Yes! Again! He cannot even live! Yes!

Tea drunk, and lips now chilled of icy regret, the mug stained with blooded clots of black leaves plucked, clean and clean, back to the kitchen, reduced rubbled stone! Where my hairy, dare shall I say that the life of me, bored to death, pushed to the edge of bullied homes of mayhem, the gunshot slit open wide gun powdered spread, yes, oh, always oh, why the oh, I must sound of the mannerisms of every lowly poet so?! Yes indeed, I can recall a moment of gangaliie, O Smully Gummgalee, the hem maker sower of the dress of blue lark skin, he once sowed, oh so sweet, the sound of cherished warbled, the trembling skin, of rippled pockmarked makers, the desire, running river, he loved his maiden so! Her the maiden, beyond the inky cold man’s toe! She young and lean, the eyes, leering, with love and peace, separated manners she loved him so, like a father of pittance, not a lover, so thus she oft sang good riddance! So sad was he the man named of the name granted upon the brow etched face, the name of Smully Gummgalee. Yes, he sang bitter tunes and sewed her the dress of blue rued thorns, the skin of a lark, the best he harvested from the tall maiden’s tree park, yes, he loved her so and wished to eat her all up in one go. But the man, Smully Gummgalee, the cryptic stone he bore upon his heart, let her go. He let her fall beyond the being of himself, beyond the void of reality, to and back again, from the depths of the raining skies, and reigning eyes, from his hideousness beyond to the arms of the man built of strength and intellect. So thus, the man, who is the name of Smully Gummgalee, went beyond after he finished her dress, but beyond her beyond, to face the man robbed of death. The running tides of wavy forests, the frosted caps of German scapes, from the tumbling blue peace of tides, down the river, Rhine.

So, I wrapped my present presently of the story of the man now gone, let us now begin the walk-in sunny rayed days, the grey gayous momentum of the moment of my passing mortality. I step from my den, the first step of clarity in my racing runny drip ridden drop dropped steel trapped heart in stone, yes now. The tomb of Christ, the skeletal one of cobwebs made of stone. My heart, like me, beat the beating drum of lamb’s delicate foreskin, the wee babe laughs. Walking from the boney eye shadowed dreams that are the tomb of the world of yesteryore, my being of the body, the eye of Herod, yes, my bod, the weakened skin loose and tight, sagged skin, the weighty heifer, hefty cuts across me, I skimmed my stone of boney fingers about me, the deathly shrill of screams no longer heard. The men and women about me, eyes and terror within the stereo, yet me, the one voiceless, me, yes, me, screams the loudest, always.

Eyes falling through the foggy horror, feet moving, all, black.

Back to the tracing table, my mellow expansive expanse, the left taken coffee, cup, the, returning. Re. Retaken ideals. I am back above the waved lapped oceanic breasted babes. Hours I must have walked with eyes blinded with clarity, my feet feeling bare, I rest about the bench, sun setting. Eyes expanding over the holy expanse of non-worldly presence, the beauty of it all, like skin burning over the open dawn of a new life. The first martyr of me, the first. My eyes meet the blazing joy, a single starched shadow cuts the sky in twain, the large vessel of feathers overhead, squeaking words beyond me. Language, the open, and the closed door. Beauty present beneath the long white foam, the wonderful foam, my dreams all present here, recorded before me, the smell of wax-soaked bodies, the smell of cut open sacks of jeweled diamonds, the encrusted crown of orange light setting beneath the waves, going to meet the peoples of the morrow. Blessed those many are, those who are to stand before the great sun from the depths of their secluded, and bundled caves, I for a moment, believed that the wonder of this urine infested, ratty tapered, coat storm dock, were to stand as the present glory of the wonderful river cut skin, but, here. Here I am, the tomb of glass, a shard of a reflection, a part of a whole, a fictitious account of days never lived, the falsifications of pain that is, oh so utterly real.

Lovely dripping ripey do, the down drum down, the deck deserted, town and face, gone and closed, the distance and dear of the runny tummy ripey disease, the eyes now fleeted but the impression of the men and mean many who stood inside the tipping canoe store of the rounded booze store, yea, them, nay, not I, they all gone, the riddling riddled, the fear of man, the fear. Oh, Kierkegaard, right you are, the man, the men, beneath he hands of God, yet the neat and tidy Nietzsche (neat in his chaos of mind!) was so right, the murdered many, the man afraid of the self, so thus he lives a life not as man, but below the man, below the already so below, human, ah yes, not human at all. Humming drum, the beach now tight and dark, the soft chilling spreezy spinning clouds, the spiraled hallucinogens in and out of the bright twinkled twisted eyes, the all-pervading explosion of the rain in the distance, sinking, and sunken the steel bloated ships, a kiss, always stolen. Smelling of beached desire, my coat wafts within and without, the taste of siren song, and sweet delight, fills my boots with sand, never any true, true, trickery awful fright! Yes, too much of the words to create a picture of wax and glue, a waxen church blazed fortress skull, the beach, it sounds, golden, hidden shoals. Days to be regretful, to have a half-loved kiss, look yonder, the two lovers, how they embrace!

As I go from the heel to toe, up and down, round the rounded rounding tired expanse of the low moving canal carved in concrete bones, I take to the air behind the bench and trees, the lovers embrace, the deathly poison to ruin any thought, the straight forward arrow laced with milk and honey, stories, written in stone. Her, the sweet child babe within his arms, beneath the sand, above the stars, flipping signs, they touch and rock the endless eyes that peer, me, the fleeing foe, the lovely watcher, recorder of woe, me, yes me, standing and sitting in a wooden little tree, the bone, wafted behind miseree, and whimsical mystery. Rhyme! Delight! Masterful tastes they make, they kiss and kiss behind the back-alley trash rumper, the blanket of sand, they kiss and kiss, she cries and screams, yet the wonderful bruises spread as her head turns to the reddened mush, he (me?), the man with knife and blade, the pink blade that mystery men and women always forbade, dawned and twisted black ego sun, yes he m(e?), the story goes as so. He touches, she bites, he screams and punches, the light limed pathway illuminating the vile explosion, enough to make me tickle! The way he rides, as mother did I, the lofty story, he me(?). Then, he goes and goes, the finishing touches, a whale whistle in the distance, foghorn, blown. The white webbed snake coiled and sluggish, he takes the briny saddled eye gun and takes the seashore ship home. She vanishes in dusted dustbins, the night light, sucking her up and not letting go, the endless fright and story to tell, but deep down, deep, deep down, she never made it out of his hands, he never let go, from the beach stained blood, he never, let go.

Off I _go_ , atop the magical mage eyes, the paranoia fleeting, and coming, the crashing waves begin louder and louder, my eye, crowded, mystery, four splashes, four splooshes, four wishful dreams of cure to life, the hemlock speech! Oh, me, the tasting desire and narrowed voices beckon the dooming screeches, the cigarette ash tapped to the brain, I begin the clinking walk up and down, the black river. Running cars and munching bites, the sky, O sky, painted inside of the mount with cavities, the poetry tells the story of waves broken, the prose of man, the poet man, the prose tells of telling tales, the Edgar man, dead, inside his entrails! Comical, yes indeed, comical story rode bed tales, my heart pumps, and pumps, the walking story continues. Flashing lights, I feel the tears of burning acidity stretch the scratched way up and down my wee babe chin, me again? Telling stories the kind men snicker, the laugh and drink, the bumbling liquor, yes my heart of majesty, the rumbling sound, rumble, oft rumble, the knife of plunging death my mother abandoned, roads empty gain and gain, roads empty, the sounds of light, and scents of the honks all flitter as the eyes of sealed marbles close and take me way away, up, down, the rounded sound of lashing waves, we live and love, the whipping stream of urine. I search for eyes yet they find me, the crushing destitution of endless clouds, the scary, clouds, black and full of angels, the posited tastes of rainy waves, the sounds of sailors struck on mines, the faces all melt, strange rains, and whipped grains, whipped, ripped, the wasteland and desired tread, the reading of tires run over my head. Where am I going? Me, the lost man of losing battles, the tethered tales I take the bussed busied ride home, over and under, the riding whales, we pass beneath the oceanic waves, the bus driver screeches, his teeth gnashed thin, the screaming sounds of knives in my head, “Let me out, let me out!” Let, let me Am I screaming? Rife? Wrong punctuation, let’s fix my scream, let us fix, gain, back, “Let me out, let me out,” the lipless and tuneless man screamed. Me! Yes, ‘twas me, the barking tellers all beat me off the crowded desire, their teeth, a plot of teeth and eyes, the men in the back, all so different than I.

Back home, before the tall cherished rubbed dome. The street far, away, the stopping sounds, where I was pushed, several miles away, miles, now blocks. All the sounds fading away, the pill popped after departure, everything spinning, wee the fun little oft ride, the sounding bottle, click and clank, found old and wasted in my pocket, the rage filling, fleeing, the hour walk, now, all of it fades. My hands touch my eyes with a gentle press. My head still aches after the moments of before. It’s all a blur, the washed day terrors of what occurred. My heart sinks again, deep below the hallways of mania and terror. I simply wish for it to all leave me, to crack me open and let the black mist pour out. My heart yearns for it, the death, the decadent cure, the passing of my great soul that spirals in the systemized ways of chaos. Perhaps the taste of life, perhaps the taste of love, perhaps it all? The ringing sounds and blood on my boots leaves me afraid, the whispers of memories. The sounds of early morning silence bring me peace. Men in tall grey coats walk beside me, man after man, all like me. My gentle sound of milk meeting with honey, the sounds of forested delight, the sounds. They bring me peace, these sounds of silence. Watching the ways of my love brings me peace, the calming love she is. I peer above her hedge of morality, above, and below, over to her, my hand soon to be outstretched, my hand to her. I just, I wish to close my eyes and open them again, but I cannot seem to get them unstuck. Perhaps this is what happens when the man on the beach lost it all? When he didn’t meet the other, when instead, the long-rounded noises of his black shoes met the cobble, he simply turned to insanity.

Back to the end of my life, I reach the soft hands of the Earth, and slowly, I fall into a deep slumber, I fall between the mossy roots and moldy mulch, I fall to a place where I am human, once more.


	9. DAY OF STARES

# DAY OF STARES

This is despair, my being, yet what do I despair of? To him, the S, the K, him, to him the despair is endless. Perhaps this is my despair, no, perhaps. Hear me, you shambling toiled souls! Do I truly desire more? Do I truly wish to stare outward of my self to see the self of the morrow? Or perhaps I am simply wading through bogged packets of deadly oils and skin patches, the masses to hold me? Perhaps it is everything, the messy chaotic contradiction of the world, that is me, yea, me.

This is all the consuming canker, that is why I must die, me the canker, a sore. A sore attached to what? I do not know. Let us ponder, washing stories, my hands covered in the black ink of characters past, me, the created, you, the author, the man, the bug of my eye, jeweled eye, and lastly you, the consumer of the worlds, the great mass of wandering things and devilish tongues that sing the universe in a silent dream, awaken and let the universe perish. Ponder? Right, us, in unison, me, myself, and thee. Trees grown upward through the shaking embrace of white air, so soon to be harvested, the screaming babe so quickly shot outward unto the floor of a world so full of mites it cannot but help to sneeze. Then why blame the soul like me? Why blame me, why must I be a canker? I imagine it always well, in the beginning, her loving me, her and I. Back and forward we bring each other to a climax of joy, but never I, always her, me, the sleepless black-eyed mother, feeding the plump child. Why must it go sour? Why must she within the running dream of the fantastical fantasies of my spiral move away from me to the man of another, why must my lovely cake of sweet succor flee from me to the flirtatious hands of another man who lusts over her? Why must my dream, my nightmare, my black orb of cracked shadows implode into reality? Why must I ache?

Where am I? In a scape of tall towers, a grassy Italy of defunct terror? The green hills where the plague once gone, now again roams? In China where I befall to the hits of the apathetic crowd? In America? In Germany? In my tight walls where my love cannot seem to move outward? Why must it go on now? At the peak? Stay and I will hurt, leave and I shall only miss you all the more, yes you, the one beating in my heart, the one who ran through the blood of Faust, the one who filled Stephen Daedalus to the brim, the one who drove Pessoa to create beauty, the one to be crushed by Nietzsche, yet, the one to fill me so. You, the devilish flames of orgasmic suffering, you, melancholy, you, despair, you, love, you, anger, you, happiness, you, regret, you, pity, you lust, you, rationality, you, irrationality, you, the humanity within me!

I must draw back. My eyes, the staring introspection of wavy shores, the tepid water filling my bladder, eyes seeing now light, where be I? My bed, the place of my birth, the place of my death, the endless womb, back to the beginning, back to. What can I do, what can I do that has not already been done? I have. What? Did it occur already? Today I, today I will. Abrupt yes.

Enraged madness, today, the weathering passageway of time, the weather always soothes me after all, I usually check before I do much, decide which to wear, which to feast on, weather, yes that. A peak of my eye outside reveals the expanses of rain and sun, raging eternity of cracked air, or moistened skies, dampening ideals about me, the lotion about my arms. Ah yes, none of them. It is a calm day, a day of moments so to speak, fragments of thoughts, much like my reality, the day of a pale sun and deep sky, the clouded expanses of repetitive clouds, the shadowed silence of house after house, the clicking desire of ominous breezes that fill everything about us all, the jagged edge, a day to sit in your lawn and bathe happily.

Delightful! Yes, she is! She has taken unto herself, yes! Her open gashing belly with wide skin! The smooth! My hands shake rapidly, the joy of fleeting pain leaves me full of running water and sugary skin, yes, calm, calm, savor the tasty delight or your opened eyes, the arousing beauty in you, for you know what she does afterward, yes, you do. My body begins to shake, fervor, the shaking fervors! Nonsense slips from my lips as my tongue lashes wildly in fright

Calm, the breathing, no, the list, the list. I turn to the form of the window and begin to list the things that line my room, the dark words with no light, begin.

A white mattress with white sheets, and a black blanket, with a single red pillow on the floor.

One, two, three, four, five, six, stacks of books, of Russian Literature, German Literature, works of James Joyce, Political Philosophy, Idealist Philosophy, and Pessimistic Philosophy, all respectively delightful, looming thousands of miles high through my low ceiling.

  * In the first stack, listed bottom to top: 
    * _The Brothers Karamazov_ in which deceit and God is shown, _Dead Souls_ in which decay is shown, Short Stories by Anton Chekhov (the true title is too dark to read but I know of the general contents) in which simplicity is shown, _A Hero of Our Time_ in which the shallow tendencies of extreme depth are shown
  * In the second stack, listed bottom to top: 
    * _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ in which tomorrow is shown, _Human, All Too Human_ in which Europe’s smoke without a flame is shown, _Faust_ (Goethe, both parts) in which today is shown, _Metamorphosis_ in which yesterday is shown, and _Das Kapital_ in which false perceptions of change are shown (never read, yet)
  * In the third stack, listed bottom to top: 
    * _Ulysses_ by James Joyce in which daily ashes of realism (otherwise known as nobility) are shown, death is shown, (also note the copy is old and shows frequent usage), and the recurring endlessness of Nietzschean rebirth is shown, _Finnegan’s Wake_ in which nothing can be said of as it rests unread, and _The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ in which birth is shown
  * In the fourth stack, listed bottom to top:



My mind, my mind, back from lists, returned, all, finished, more, shall I? No, I shan’t. The return, my embers of soul, the drained swamp, first steamy, yes. Drained. Hands gripping hands, I stop and unfurl my fingers to grab up my chair and move it towards the crack of my window. The chair, a one of before, wooded, old, renewed comfort. Something reminds me of coffee my stepfather drank, the taste also of my grandfather’s cigars and sweet creamer in the concrete air, within the turning scent of oil and dusty cars awaiting work that is seemingly never received.

I put on an old tattered shirt, the worn colorings of grey, faded, the stains of paint, and bloodied rags degraded the quality of it some time ago. She is still there, her twisting waist, the elegance. I watch her, the moving sun, the perception of time, of her, on her white chair, her polka-dotted dress and shadowed eyes, the pale arms, the delicate hair plucked and primed, the wondrous expansion of her shadowed eyes beneath that stout apple tree. The wonder.

She seems so peaceful, the woman, the one before me, her, the anima of all. Her, yes. Always, Her great white toga, her breasts poking forward, the arm upward above her, the joy of her, the flexed arm holding her hair, the lack of shoes, the sanded dirt under her, the column, the ray of white light illuminating her endlessly. Light about her, yes indeed. My ideal, the brazen skin of her pale eyes, the light of her fire, the fire of love, never lust. I see her too, there, the sweet sleeping Irish beauty within her box of foggy air, the clicking sound soft trotting toes, the world of rough men and tired blind manics, the world, her, my sleeping Irish beauty. All concealed within the pale joy of bright purism, the wonder, great starry skies she turns over and oft, the heaving shift of her legs, the heaving shift of her bosom, the wandering eyes, she knows me all too well, me from my tower she sees me never, yet she loves me so much. Why else would she stand before me? Standing clad in nude joy? Does her soul open? Why else? She must love me, for I love her so.

My first love, she was not quite like this supreme beauty. But to compare the two essences of these great beasts who pin me down is to compare the greater and lesser infinity. For my first love, she was for a moment of the qualities of this pure soul, her ego was free of the touch of any man, the teeth of her shining bright, the glint of a joyous Sunday dancing about her head. How she used to stare upon me with those eyes, the deep sea of brown waves, the clashing storms I had to resist, lest my being be torn asunder, pulled to and fro, leaving me riddled with pus blights that have scarred my soul, she was beauty incarnate. But, alas, within a flash, within that moment, that great blink, she turned sour, her eyes met another man, she grew away from me, first against her own will, but eventually, she chose no longer to look at me as I did her, she no longer spoke in the air how she would, she turned from me, she saw the hideous canker of my despair, my black blight, and it overpowered her, she hated me for it. She hated my tears, my groveling, my weakness, but worst of all, she despised the very essence that I wished to become, the great monster who loomed above me, she hated _him_. Her body, her lips, met another man, she would depart and laugh with his soul, the flirtatious monster stole her from me, everything gone. The banter of bumped skin, the joy of smooth tips caressing. The lips, grazing. She abandoned me, yet I need no pity, I need no remorse, for I, the canker, the ugly man shall take all disgust. But it shan’t be the same with my love now. For my new love. The radiance of rebirth, my prey, and my predator, the great fire within and without. The great. The numbers of explosive quantity, the empty skyline riddled with golden spirals of naturalistic wonder! She shall come to love me, she must, she does. I love her, she shall love me, for she is pure, her heart, open, wide, free, the elegance of her pointed soul, the bouncy thing that holds her essence tight against her lungs, the monster who shall murder my despair. She sees me, not at all, my face, a shadow hidden behind a forest, yet she must feel the greatness of my love. Look at her, upon her hair, reclining in the hot sun, showing herself to me! The hint of a leg! A tease she is! The bubbling desire of her great womb, spilling for me. My friends, she now departs, look, look, watch her wrath, the tinkling tightly wound legs pick and pluck, her father, move bastard, look again, she is free, the door opening, she shuts, it, close to her, closed behind her door. Yes, the confirmation, the breath, the breathing beating tides of her life, the shore that shone always and forevermore! The. Calm.

Look, I hear nothing, I can imagine her sound though, I know what she is to do now. I can picture the great Caucasus of Europa, but I cannot picture this with clarity, I cannot imagine her walking up through her house, up and down, the glint of wet legs and wetness dripping, I cannot picture the brown shrubbery poking forward, nor can I imagine anything else that is about to lead up to the nigh moment. But it has arrived, yes indeed, she has left her window open, the breeze, succulent breeze, the looseness of God blows for me now, He opens her up, flower, in bloom.

The storybook is written by the scholar:

_He presses his index finger and his thumb with due weight against his thick black curtain, using them both to open it to the right of him, as he uses his right hand to do so. He always favors his right hand in these moments, the moments of mediocre importance, as he thusly reserves the important moments for his left hand, as he is improperly, left-handed._

_But what is he peering at from this minute crack betwixt his curtains? At this very moment, he took forward his eyes, peering down through the gnarled tree positioned in the front of his yard. The tree itself was quite old, I am not however, a botanist, nor do I possess the means to open the tree and tell you of its exact age, but rather one could, or would rather, assume that the tree was of minimum fifty to sixty years of age. As he, our character, concerning this moment, hardly departed from his residence, as he was, and is still a hermit of sorts, he does not take the time, in his free moments of relative calmness to trim the tree. Nor does he, however, possess the affluence required to purchase the goods and services of one who can trim the tree for him. But, this by no means is to imply that our fellow character is lacking in monetary stability, as he had received a large lump sum of a half a million dollars, as a result of high achievement despite his youthful setbacks. The lump-sum is regularly deposited within a savings account under his name, which I have not been permitted to share with the reader at this moment, or any moment passed this point._

_But I digress, as now our character is still staring intently out of his window, through the gnarled tree positioned in the direct front of his window. He has, within the previous hour, been staring at a girl, of the name Lux (this is not her natural name, as he, our character came up with this placeholder instead), who is two years younger than he, and who lives directly across from his residence. The houses themselves are of the same model, a three-bedroom, a two-bathroom household in the midst of a suburban area. His residence, however, was painted a Payne’s Grey, whereas her house, or her parent's house, as she, being two years younger than him, still lived at home, was painted an Umber tone, however the exact title of the paint escapes my mind._

_But I digress. He is watching this female, falsely named Lux, which is quite preposterous indeed! Who is two years younger than he, and who lives directly across from his house, because he was entirely enamored by her character. He, however, had never possessed the courage to meet the girl directly, but instead looked from afar, frequently finding himself beneath her unintentional spell, as they had never met. When he first had moved to this residency as a result of a slight expenditure of his accrued wealth, he did attend a public mixer held at the communal facility within the direct center of the housing facilities. Here, he had spotted her for the first time, but unfortunately, for our character, not for her, you, or I, he had within that moment a striking of hysteria, as a female, who closely resembled his deceased mother had knocked into him by mistake. She had apologized severely, and he, our character immediately fled the communal facility for his house and proceeded to complete his path of hysteria._

_But I digress, as he_ my mind begins in the shambling shaking of endless delight, her body the wonderful beam of endless joy, how she shall rise, endless, _our character who appears to be watching_ this my wonderful Lux _,_ the walking sun. Oh, yes. _Proceeding, our character suddenly builds speed within his breathing, his patterns, quite seemingly erratic,_ the erotica, the joy of her life, the blending of graphite pencils, ah yes, look, she drops her clothes, she begins, _he, our character then proceeds to lean forward, pressing his hands in a most private of areas,_ my love, our unity now, you touch and touch, the gliding surface of your soul as I move forward, _he our character, now proceeds to watch his supposed love, who, of the age two years younger than he, who_ yes my love, continue, yes I know you feel me, my love, feel my beating blood trickle within you, yes close your eyes, _and as he, our character stares forward, he proceeds to imagine the inner depths of her, the touching_ endless quite sugary lumps of coal she shall spoon into my soul, the light of life, loosing grip, _how she might upon the near future hold him as he slipped away into rest, how_ yes she would please me and burn me, how she is the pure goddess of bright sunny shining rays, _how she might there upon bear his children and allow him, our character to write and paint as he so pleased, how she would love him within his darkest hour,_ oh yes my love, the additional mate of the third finger, enter into you, yes, enter, and cram, as I run my euphoric body about myself. _Within his final moments of staring, he, our character, in unison with her,_ Lux _, reached their climax upon the same interval, then he_ my mym mymymymym yes the ebbed skin, the cotton weaved orbs of impregnated sour souls, hold me to the blood of lands never felt, drain on me, as my body drips in sorrow for I cannot even touch you. My love, my greatest companion, I _T_ b _h_ e _e_ g _n_ t _h_ h _e_ a _o_ t _u_ y _r_ o _c_ u _h_ s _a_ h _r_ a _a_ l _c_ l _t_ s _e_ e _r_ e _b_ m _e_ e _g_ a _a_ s _n_ I _t_ s _o_ e _w_ e _e_ y _e_ o _p_ u.

My eyes close, and my head falls back, my arm aching silently by my side. My lips part slightly, and a sweet song slides from the back of my sore throat:

_Come now my dear my darling,_

_Tomorrow there is fear,_

_Today, none, my darling._

_For the sun shines true_

_When you open your eyes,_

_My day, my dear, my darling._

_Pearly whites, tonight no frights,_

_My dear, my darling._

_Hot white kisses on my forehead,_

_Hold me closer in my bed,_

_Our hearts no more,_

_But just our heads,_

_Together, today, my darling._

_Grooves of shadows no more,_

_Tomorrow unbeknownst,_

_Love today,_

_Upon our eve,_

_The day our soul shall meet._

_Set us free,_

_Can’t you see?_

_There is no more miseree!_

_Today, tomorrow, my darling._


	10. THREE

# THREE

I find myself; I find. No, I have not found it. As I draw closer to the edge of my life, to the edge of this current state, as I peer forward into the bright future that I hold with her, I realize now, I realize that a _man_ must be ready for it.

The man of my weak stature, now, the man who trembles in agony, the one who cracks with despair must build himself tall for the change of the morrow, lest he shall crumble in immediacy, the great waves of joy shall fill the cracks of him, and as ice fills the cracks of a stone, it shall send him to pieces.

So then, what shall occur? What? Yes, indeed I shall train my body for the aftermath of our love, I shall relinquish this unnatural bond of celibacy, and truth shall be found, I shall meet the pure spirit as pure as myself, her never touched, I touched only by one. Yet while I shall have found the physical touch within the other, within the soon, I shall never allow her to peer within my heart and soul, my thumping being, she, the one of immediacy shall never take hold, no, that I am sure of. Sure, of it, sure and sure. The certainty of my life, always uncertain, but now, I shall stand in power. My surge of power comes now before me, the tweeting sounds of the larks that sing through the air call me upward, the blazing bright handles of my chariot await, tomorrow shall come, and the great men shall rise from the ashes of yesteryear, the deep black ashes of decadent powerlessness, yes, the true birth, now, yes, yes, running, the endless thoughts within me, endless, end.

I have reinvented myself, even now, I stand strong, he shall stand, a change of my body, a change of my mind, the empty nude shell hidden away in my closet. I put upon myself a white shirt, the delicate scratchy thing about my body, black pants, black boots, and an olive-green jacket. A green jacket, found and scoured in the depths of a bin somewhere, smells of blood and distant powder, the orange baking sounds of a life before.

My hand places itself on the door, and I push it open. I do not walk through the door; I simply close it and open it again. The stiff air gusts itself over my face each time. Repeating through the creaks, the door cracks and howls. My eyes are closed. I feel a woman moaning softly in unison with the door, open, close, moan, moan. I see her eyes tightly wrapped; her brown hair softly colored with sweat. I step forward. I feel damp on my skin now. The thick fog clouds the streets, no sounds, no chirps, no turns, only the silence of time before me, upon the edge of my fingers. Life, the grand symphony, the intelligence of a world long gone, peer about you, outward from the crystal ball that is the past, outward and outward, the passing times of passing cars all flow like the rusted rivers of a failed world. I take to the right of my sidewalk, the right turn, the right side, the right-handed menace running forward. About me is house upon house, the repetitive endless cycles of birth and death, the same demon clawing upward through the floor of each soul, through it all, he curses them, he curses me. I shall never scream, not as I once did.

Through the forest of houses, I come upon the edge of the block, the tall brown wall that encloses it all, the brown wall that looms over us, coated in ivy to grant the illusion, ivy soured souls that use it to climb. Always climbing. Across the road, is a long stretch of barren fields. The empty fields are barren save for steel wheels all spouting water, the dried dirt crackling in the distance, the white and brown leaves sprouting from the depths. An empty field, the swaying expanses of power, the uncultivated soil, awaiting the chance to receive great abundance. My distance of harmony, the running eyes in and out from the maize of mazes of the years gone past, in and out you wander, my mind, the greater terror of wrath. Reborn, the cycle begins anew.

I walk over each stone about this concrete tongue that wraps this city up, the tongue, a speaking word, a speaking of silence, the ignored imagination. I go about the tired cracks, the leaves that have scattered about it all, the thinly covered depth. I pass by more houses, the field across the way comes to an end, the fog, enveloping it wholly, the endless houses, the expanses. I come by a white church with grey roofing, a somber sight beheld by the basking light of creamy air, a creamy world. I stop for a moment, to simply stare. My eyes following the curves of the building, black tiled roofing, and white wood soaking into my skin, a windowless mission. Tall arches stretch outward, and dripping stone mouths that hold back nothing waver in their perches. The tall spire, the single, single pyre, a peak of majesty, the wired green homes cast into the straight air, the single church, I breathe for a moment, in through my nose, the thrill of the sights, out through my nose, the thrill of what could be.

My clicking tongue tastes the buttery air for a moment. I resume my walk, my thin pace going about the tired world, resting quietly by itself, no eyes, no hands, no people to stir the lovely silence. My arms dance about the air as I go about my world, my hair, falling through and through it all, falling, falling, and moving, going about everything. Moved by the music of my mind I see the great power of a red hand commanding my halt. But I go forth, the walking carelessness, no meaning behind it all. No meaning behind my denial of authority, nor about the endless houses, nor the clouded field, nor the lone church.

I stand for a moment, and my ears gaze inward, an image seen for a moment. A single flowering sound that cuts through my soul. It is my peace, the birthing pink flower blooming about an expanse of brown soppy lilies. So I rest within this great blue pond, the waves reaching my sides, the stirring ripples of koi, their orange with black and white, all flowing, the webbing of their mucus flung about the air, a single note of pleasure, the buzzing sounds of flowing water, all into us here, the great milk of all, the flowing noises of the breeze that carries the great leaves and yellow flowers. A simple breeze, blown from the depths of a faraway sea, the sounds of harmony about us now as we all sway in the unison of this glory. A single bird swoops through the air, resting and chirping, the sounds of a thin harp and swaying oboe, pleasantries of pinkish delight that bring us all upward. The bees that buzz now coming upon our grand symphony, the depths of their flight, the milking sounds of their drawing, the plans of the world, all delighting about our spring past, the time of airs, a single breath is drawn, the beauty of it all. The prancing sound of a distant white fox, the silence of resting eternity beneath a brown log, the joy of _it_ , the elegance of the muted cello and its hums. It ends as it has begun, the silence to sound, and sound unto silence.

Let me continue my friends, my wondrous friends who delight in this ink-soaked world. I take my life, the feet of mine, no longer cold, now full of warmth, ah yes, about me. I come to the end of my walk and for a moment, once more, I stop. Here I arrived. Before me, is a tall house, the deep burgundy of brick cutting into the grey skies, the boarded windows, the empty swaying tunes of it. A place, seemingly empty. Yet before me, I see the bustling hidden flower of forestry, ripe, and in bloom. The delightful white spectacle that hides before these boards and bars.

A man is asleep by the door, a large, heavy man, his head, turned to his shoulder, the gap of his mouth, pushing about fog. His hat, a beanie, tucked over his brow. I clear my throat loudly, yet I am careful indeed to not illuminate any anger. For he is a friend, a quiet friend who rests in his stool, the guardian to beauty and wonder, without him, without the bravery and eloquence of this delightful spirit, all will fall within a moment. After I clear my throat again his eyes move, they open, reddened with the bustling depths of slumber. He meets me with his eyes. A scowl, faint yet prominent, forms on his countenance.

“You got the money?”

My hands probe within my pockets, with delight I open my hands to him, he nods and rises from his steel stool slowly, his aching joints limiting him of course. But I am not on any sort of hurry, a change, a rebirth unto the flow of greatness must be met with utter calmness, man must be patient when facing the grandeur of naturalism. He takes out a large brass key ring, with eight keys upon it, turning and fiddling, he scratches the lock and fits the proper key on his eighth attempt. A click, the entry, a click, the twist, a click, the extraction, a clink, the putting away. He sits in his stool once more and gestures that I may enter. I walk through the door, tall and brown.

Ah! My friends! There is upon my entrance so much splendor, the beauty of the interior. A tall winding rose coated staircase that extends upward, the beauty of its Persian gauntlet, so wondrous my friends. A single chained chandelier hangs high, the bright yellow candles, the flickering flames that move with such beauty, O my friends, you would most certainly be delighted. The aroma cast outward is neither unpleasant nor unbearable. It is the precise opposite of anything that can be named unpleasant. The aroma, grand and beautiful, the permeating explosiveness of bright pink roses, the lilac scents, and magnolia blossoms of heaven. The scent of naturalism my dear friends. Oh, and the floor, so delightful, gold and black entanglements, spinning and slipping through the rising flower world. On the tiles, is sharp curvature of beauty, and black shine. The scepter imprinted, the waxen smells and sleek cleanliness! Not a single speck or crumb of filth here. The reflectiveness of the floor shows me in near perfectness, yet I shall admit I am too ashamed to cast a glance unto myself. A thin man is seated behind a round desk, behind him inboxes with letters sit clean and prim. His face, utterly aged, yet, his yellowed smile radiates the joy of his post. He is adorned in an elegant burgundy suit, the black-tie contrasting very well with a white undershirt. Truly, here we see a fashionable man. His voice, hoarsely, commands me to sign the ledger. Yet the tonality of his command is that of calmness, a gentle motion to do, neither a lash nor a soft feather upon your face. Instead, he cast to me, a gentle hand.

He reads my name to himself and proceeds forthwith, opening a door behind him, which until now my friends, I must duly admit went unnoticed. Now instead I shall describe to you this door, it is quite delightful indeed, a white door, the gold handle matching well with the candlesticks and other knobs of gold. Not a single amount of paint was faltering here upon the door, it was as if it was freshly painted! Engraved on the door are patterns of vines and wood waves. Ah, this room so delightful, cast in jewels and beauty, the bright lights and sweet aromas that fill my nose with graciousness, my eyes, once sore, now, seeing the beauty of a natural world. So delightful, I simply wish you could be here my friends. To see the depths and harmonies of this place.

In the other room, he whispers silently to another person, most certainly a feminine counterpart. Through the door I see a brown desk, which is not faltering, nor is it cast in uncleanliness and sloppy portrayals of papers. On the surface of the desk sits a vase, and within this vase, I see positioned, quite wonderfully I might add, two flowers, a beauteous magnolia, the bright white petals of it quite large, and a single pink rose. The rose itself is arched upward, curving to the left, the slight bend of it, so delightful, the rose, shows no sign of wilt, yet upon inspection of the magnolia, a single petal is beginning to be browned.

After their period of discourse, the female steps from the room with a clipboard, her hands wrinkled, yet prim, and of course, the same can be said of her face. A pearl necklace, bright, with an elusive shine upon it holds up her loosened skin. She smiles at me, her teeth, neither yellow nor brown pulse forward with the glint of her pearls. Her winding eyes, brown and grey, the aged stare that has seen the depths of loss and life, the eyes and stares of a wrinkled soul, a rejuvenated being, now living her days as a prospector of the natural course. She then hands me the clipboard, the lightweight thing, a single paper attached. A form of sorts, one of selection. I shan’t provide the details of the paper, as it is quite troublesome to do so. After that moment, I then proceed to grant her the board once more, she reads the paper, skimming the boxes and their contents, and then places the board on the countertop before us. She turns herself away from me, receding into the room, and as such, she goes out of view. Silence for a mere moment my friends. Yet this silence, is so delightful, it is music unto itself, the stirring quietude of the world, the pushing beauty of delicate flowers. A buzz rings from the back, she walks to the counter and asks for a sum of three hundred dollars. I then amply provide her with the sum of money, and she places it in a small grey box, locked of course, beneath the counter.

Delightful, delightful, she leads me up the stairs, their winding beauty encapsulates me as I run my hands upward through the golden rail, gliding over the light and cold surface. My friends, so delightful, again and again, delightful! I am roused from the depths of my chest as I continue the walk, she leads me further and further up until we reach the third floor.

We continue our march through the winding hall, hall unto hall, each with endless doors that sing muffled noises of grass and trees. My beating heart, the fluttering clad iron pulse that moves my body, my feet warm and sensitive, ache in my shoes, my head, the swirling delight of yearning brings me forward. We stop before a door at last. The slow hum continues within the near distance, the floors, brown and rugged, the same pattern that clad the stairwell, the intricate Persian designs. The door, this door. No, sorry my friends, allow me to correct myself. The door that I now stand before reads out via three black letters on a bronze oval plate, “358”. The climbing sounds of the symphony fills the wandering dust of the walls about us. She unlocks the door and points to a single large bed in the midst of the room. White sheets, the bridal bounty, the beauty of it all, the dark grey light boarded out, now replaced by the bright flickering of many candles. Above the bed hangs an intricate portrait of Bacchus, softly carved in pale reddish skin, a hint of sorrow hangs on his face.

I sit on the bed, unlacing my shoes, I place them to the right of me. I feel the great bounds of infinite power moving within my soul, the extension of my arms moving about the atmosphere, guiding the world about me, all is in my palms, as my heart trembles no longer, I am but the bridge unto tomorrow, my rebirth is now, my tomorrow rests today, within my consciousness, the slippery eel that escapes upwards, now caught and placed in net, I shall soon break free. I am no longer a mere flower in a pond, I am but the sky, the earth, the water itself, I am faded away into the grand landscapes of consciousness, all shall bend unto my profundity.

The door, it opens. A woman stands there. Her white skin, the radiance, she looms above me, the black, long-haired beauty before me. Her waist wide, the beauty about her. A great deep terror, the shrill of her eyes light me aflame. The wonder of her soul, the trembling trepidation. She is clad in a white, silk dress, one can see through it, her breasts peer outward, the greyish tips, the candied sweets. She touches nothing, she only sways in silence. Her dress falls. She walks to me, her phantom body, the nude clad skin, the beauty. Alone I feel, I feel so alone, please save me, lift me upward, I am but a dainty brown petal in your hand, please, save me. She takes my clothes off, casting my shirt and jacket, the pants fall quicker, she takes me, embracing me, pushing me back unto the bed, her tongue, a razor over my body, please, save me from this place I have made a mistake, no my friends do not fret, I am still here, I am but the bridge my friends, no please I have made a mistake, free me, free me please, I beg you. She kisses me again, no not again I am not ready to see you again please no, her body, the succulent endlessness of her bright pink lips, how they graze me slowly now, my pale chest, the boney, fattened structure of my body, touched and caressed, her eyes meet me, she sees me, the lashing tail lashes my heart, whips and tears, the Walpurgis Night is now in my soul, they all flock to me, my mountainous epochs, the fear of my own abyss, her skin ripping me open, womb in soul and spirit, the great expanse and life giver you are, please, I beg you, you are not well you are cursed with the sustenance of unnaturalness, she knows me, she sees within me, my life flutters away, my mind throbbing in despair as she continues her speed, the smut of my life, please no, I demand it, please let me go, my eyes bleeding the depths of a salted sea, the blood of a world unknown, inked eyes and blackened lashes, please set me free, she grips and moves, the white sheets stained and wettened, my pace, the rigid motion as she moves and claws me open, the yellowed eyes, please I beg you God save me, He turns His back as I fall through the floor, the great world opening its black womb, it saving me from nothing, dooming me to everything. No please, not again, please do not go, my frail bod, the limp skeletal implosion of my soul, the tired drawn out expunged death, please, where am I rambling, she cannot hear me, the automation of the lust, man after man, her loosened grip on me, thrown about, thrown and moved and pushed, please save me, my love, I look to you, my love, my resort, the angel of the air, the world and they, please save me, let me fall apart within your safety, yet she proceeds the horror, the grand boiled bushed surface that reverses my skin unto itself, the succulent riding waist of her, pressing against me, the dance with a corpse, I sit motionless, my body shaking as she chuckles in silence, her eyes, the scorn in them, her hatred, she lashes me with her tongue, the sharp knifed thorns cutting through my bones once more, please take me unto the skies as I do not wish to die here amongst the men of many earthen flames. He cast me below, the sharp tendril of her heart, the sharp tendril of a defilement of the world, ripping, rip, rip, screams and terror, the hell heated fire already in me, the smelling salts can longer rouse me from my sleep, for I am cast in a marbled mask of death. She rests, and her mouth is laced forth unto silence with great wire. Hot heated pads, the sliding snake comes out, the endless difficulty of strength, she stops for a moment, then continues, my endless defilement by the external, the great natural Babylonian world, the three-headed dragon of my doom, the cut of a world beyond my grasp that splits me into eight eaten cakes and scrumptious delight, the tender touch no longer tender, no longer cold, please. Please. I. I tremble. My eyes turning white within, as the foamy touch of her crashing waves all spill out, her legs wetted and dampened, the dank flopped horror, foul bastard gnawed upon my skin. The maggots placed inside, my soul eaten away as I touch the breath of another, the needless defilement, no longer am I atop the mountain, no longer am I free, I am entrapped within a black cell of great terror, my legs ripped open, the muscle expanding beneath the pressure of tearing ropes, my skin tightening as it all becomes open, the fire about my chest as I slowly live longer. They lift me from my seat and place me beneath the swaying blade of lust, the filleting of my skin, the gentle peeling beneath the flames, boiled chicken, the skin taught, the muscles and innards pouring out as I am eaten by my other selves, eaten and feasted upon I feel the bites of their thorns, the screaming, their hollowed shells and boney tongues that lick and probe. They feast upon my skin, a lit candle held beneath my eyes, the melting flames of a world I once knew, please do not forgive me, please forgive me, this. Unto my shadow, my grave is dug, and the stone firstly cut, ready to be written. Soon.

The sounds of her voice now, the loud hums, a clinking of a silent violin, the dangerous coiled stream, the endless stretching claws about the blackened and green boarded world. End as you proceed with the speed and screams, my heart and soul are bleeding as she shouts to the world to call unto her breasts, the temptress, the demoness, please you foul whole being, please don’t do this, please do you not see my blood is the same as yours, alas do you not see the weakness of me? Alas, look upon me! Her eyes, now please look away, yet she does not do so, her eyes, they do not stare away, the glass illumination, the tired search of magmatic dogma that pours over me, my heart diced unto the blended world, the mashed trembling rotten maggots that pour from me, all born into flies, she sees the black crashing waves of dead birds below as I claw to the top of the ridge, and within, within, within, oh please, no, oh, she screams, I melt upon the sedated sounds of her deafening tremble, resist the action of expulsion, resist the transience of the passing trains, resist the eternal occurrence. But alas, within the end, the final draw, I succumb.

Her arms pour upon me with delicate deceit, her being enveloped about me. She holds me tight, me, the newfound babe, my tears fall about us, her arms. Oh, her arms. The understatement of my pointless descriptions does no service to her beauty, the woman to birth me, to hold me, to slay me down, and put me unto rest. Her cheeks, the pale dream of an angel’s song, the spinning cobbled web of her eyes, the long-tired eyes, the white lips that sing songs of distant lands, the farewell to the world never known. Her beauty, her kindness, the servant, she has taken me. I wish to flee, my soul, my chest commands me to, yet my legs melt unto nothingness within her arms, she knows all, the beauty and endless time of spaciousness, me, I pale in comparison to her, to her beauty, her strength. She battles the world each day, yet I hardly act. This love of mine, perhaps this is the fear of God so many men speak of? The end of time never touches me, history acts upon me like the Irish poet.

There is a knock at the door. She stands, the distant willow breath of her body covers the room, the candles are blown out, a sliver of light in the room. She does not stop to look at me before she leaves, her eyes trace nothing as she wanders about the world, an endless corpse, the object of all, the creation of all. The stabber, and the stabbed.

I stand from the bed, and I clothe myself, my body, weak, bile built up within my very throat. I feel the urge to vomit my words, and my stomach, my past, and my present. I wish to stay here forever, to relinquish all things and live here, a weak bug, nothing human. Yet I stand, yet I walk out of the room. Never to return to it again.

I depart through my only path of egress. The carpet below my feet is faded, worn, and stained with mud. I follow no one as I leave. The paint on each door is peeling, some frames lacking their seal, bodies writhing in the darkness. The screams of moans push through the thin doors and walls. Motherly mothers, the death to them, the murderers of men. Standing ovations to cruel bastards, men and women alike. I simply wish to sleep; with drudgery, I pour forward. Always pouring now eh? I think that perhaps we are free, but perhaps not, perhaps the illusion of not knowing grants us will, yet all are already acted upon? All is in reality. But then what is reality? Coldness falls on me, the tattered rug twists into nothingness, befallen unto a worn staircase. The wood, empty, steps given out, the sounds of running water fill the air above the dampened shouts. The stairs go downward, a fallen banister. An old chandelier lingers about the air, coated with skin, skinly dust, the dancing specks, lights buzz about it. The scent of it all, reeks. The fouled bodies of death and mold, the destruction, the maggots of my soul, I am perhaps the greatest sinner to date. No man before me has befallen this curse, I am lone in the bowels of the ice of hell.

If I wished to die then, if I simply wished to fall into death, then now I demand it with fervor. I do not deserve her taste of sweet apple lips, I do not deserve to think of my light, her, my love. I do not deserve to walk about the ground as she does, her dripping sweet scents of honey, I do not deserve to inhale the illustrious light of air as she does too, I do not deserve to exist upon this reality. Perhaps it is time for me to die? No, my mind and body might, therefore, demand it, my soul might be stained of sins, yet I feel that my soul wishes to cling to this life. It wishes to stay in the land of ink and pens, of an illustrated world. I know, you, you who is controlling my beating heart, you control me, I want to die, yet you push endlessly, you push me forward, let me perish, please.

My feet meet the floor, a crunch of empty wood. Emptied wood, and bitten bugs, the maggots that eat at me. Bite, unto bite. Sweaty pulsing skin. I walk to the door, and I pass the counter, a man, old, worn, his face full of regret, looking to his near doom, his face. How it peers at the floor below, his clothes, tattered, worn, the old body, of the old world. I see for a moment, beyond the counter, an open door, a room of papers and waste, newspapers stacked and riddled with a great surplus of dusted lives. The dry dust that powders the air, the thin, blood stopping dust. There, on the desk are two flowers, a rose, clean, the bright green soul, beneath a crack of light, the pink petals, sweetly colored, the plump lips of nature, a gift of long time past, bestowed unto a woman by the trembling man. But beside it, beside it sits a shriveled brown heap, hardly a flower, wilted and cracked, coated in brown and black, as if when one would touch it with a slight tap it would then reduce to nothing, but ash.


	11. EPITAPH

# EPITAPH

I took a walk to the edge of the city today, and there, peering over a bridge I looked upon the running water below, the caressing hands that spun for what seemed like an eternity.

The great hands, so soft and sweet, the beautiful hands that wished to wash away my sorrow, they called to me, and I almost jumped in. It would have been the death of me I am certain. In and out that thought of being, seems to go through me. Inside the boney structure of my being, through my maze of ego, in and out. The trickling sounds of despair. But what stage of despair am I? Let us address the topic, shall we? Rightly so, but first, we must set the scene of where I rest now in this moment. Where? Open, eyes, the marbles and great knacks of the heart, and describe!

The sweeping sands bellow to and to, the gusting breeze, the tired washing sounds of Njörðr, yes, the wished washed tumbling gusts. Blow over the far waves. The wandering mist that lingers over the black rocks that scatter about the shore, blue waves with the thick crop of cream, the sounds of crashing discourse upon the horizon, the scents of melted wax. The trees about me bent and red, orange bark, and green leaves, the falling sounds like beating drums, great wind to pull them all down, walking shores, the sounds of people long gone, one I am here, lone along with this abandoned place, the bluff of times that are engraved within my repetition that is life. Either, or, life, death. White puffed up beings of smoke, the giant with a great sword, wielded against the stone-faced, blind man, crashing thunder of pure delight, but so, when they crash in their ill-fated battle and all goes to grey, everything, alas, must always dissipate. The blue skies, the distant, almost endless expanse above the green oceanic depths, the blue skies, the blue. Always. Carved words fly about the sky as the horizon brings about something to me. The deep blue expanses. A falling man, the abyss, open fangs.

There it stands, the moment of current realism, the moment, yes, now. The tight sphere of my life, the truth of my eyes, the path of doom. The infinite fantasy of tomorrow, my soul, cast before you, a lizard atop the jagged black stones, the backing glass, the open eyes, the open mind. Where am I amongst the wandering souls? Where am I within this thick boggy forest that we call reality? Do I despair about the finite? About the weakness within my constitution? Or, do I defy, do I wish to be my truth so terribly? Do I wish to be this self? No. None of these, yet I still despair! Yet my bones still wake within me! Yet I still tremble in the endless crashing sounds, like blades of grass! The sound of shoals, the sound of the fjords, the distant hymn of a pagan soul cut wide open, the endlessly winding path of dirt and rock, the deep brown sands, sown with red, sown with gold. The distant shadows of crimson hearts, yes, it all. _No_ , I despair about _everything_ at _one_ moment, like the man before me, the great man of foggy rooms, of windows, I despair over my dream, over my life, over the self that I cannot become, the fact that the self I wish to become is so weak, the mere fact that I cannot have the riches of power in my arms, the fact. I despair over God and the Devil, I despair over _all_ , name me the deity of despair, the deity over endless pleasure of doom, over orgasmic peaks of suffering. Is this perhaps, Beyond Good and Evil? My carved name, the words, my epitaph, each line carved one day at a time. Each day, each moment. I can recall some flashes of my past, the danger, the friend that is joy, the only friend to me, the one, woe. I can imagine what this must sound like from the external, the poor soul, the poised wit, the pointless remarks of rambling, the scoffing of all, the hatred, poor thoughts and poor words, the poorest of them all. The poorest. I sit quietly. Quietly, about the horizon, about the pale moon that slowly pulls its body away each eve, to put itself up there, against that violet sky, against those expanses of deep swirled beauty of pulsing dreams. How can it? How can the moon have that strength to stand itself against the beauty of life, against the beauty of infinity, despite its cracked face? Despite its ugliness? Perhaps that is why the moon is beautiful? That it can stand so lovingly against things greater than it, that it can see the greatness in others, and it does not shy away, it still comes about even when it appears hidden, even when the darkness overtakes it in every cycle, it still stands, the grace of its sorrow blocking itself from us.

The evening is always wonderful here, yet not tonight, I simply feel, like a mirror. An illusion, a thing in which one checks their hair, or where one practices their smile, a thing so rightly ignored, so rightly hated and shattered by many. A mirror, the refection of all things, I do not wish to reflect, I do not wish to feel the pulsing blood within me, I do not wish to reflect his pain, this caricature of Nihilism, I simply wish to smile, to feel the radiance that was never granted to me, to begin with. But yes, there are many others like myself, alike the wandering leaves of my mind. I stand from my seat and I continue home, my legs wobble, a weight still lingering in my arms. Yes, I do say that I shall sleep well, knowing all of that, knowing that there is, and are, is. Are? Are, yes, are there, that there are more. More of me, the wee toy soldiers all lined forward. I used to have a toy solider, a quiet red man, never spoke much, well of course not! He was a toy. My feet scuff silently against the nightly silence, a couple across the road chuckle lightly as I go by.

As they pass, my heart seizes in horror, a great blade of ice trimming my spine, a soft cut. A deep clawing image of my love. Her face imposed over hers, my face over his. Us in arms, the soft voices filling the stage of the evening. The evening clobber of staged kisses, her eyes opening to my own lips, the loving rose eyed bloom, the loving petunia of heart and skin, opening wide to swallow me whole. I breathe alone, behind a cobbled wall, my hand grasping the stones as anger fills me, as my skin becomes ink. I feel as if, that if, if, if his Dublin was real, if those people were _life_ , that those moments possess within themselves, the peak of average reality, the truth never written before, then this, this moment, these _moments_ , these are the direct contrast. That my tears, the running woman, my love, are all merely blotches, stains. That all in my life, the drawn images, etched back and out to pigskin bones, that this, that, it’s drab of rotten mold. The love felt by the touch of mother, all is lost and gone to my life, written by the fool who types me now, a moment in the future spliced over the past, please set me loose from my mind and rouse me up no longer, all my moments are subject to the doom you write for me. Give me joy, hear me hum out my pleas to the world. From the dust peppered on the ends of the leaves, from the sea that breaks to the shore, from the tower that crumbles, from all to beginning, all to the end, all in my pages, lost, somewhere. Melodrama built upon the grave of an Irish man, me, formless like he, but me, more depraved, me, more lost, nameless and without an eye, I crawl through the cave you carved, all winding back into its endless drop of maggot flesh.

Hear me, hear me and my tears that lap at the ground, hear me in my milky eyed loss, grant me one word, to set myself free. Please, let me weep!

Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. 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Silence from below, from above. The sound. I grow weary at the thought of speaking, at the thought of being alive. My eyes, stained with dried tears, with the beating drums of woe. I wish for freedom, for the consciousness of my self to escape beyond my clutches. I simply wish to stand strong, to face against that grainy wind that lashes me over and over, to stand within it, to stand strong, to go forward with ease and without strife, I wish to live a life that so many others get to live.

Perhaps that is why I am like this, perhaps, always? Always, the same bubbling, bumbling noises and messy words of poetry and prose, the rhyming sounds and same descriptions, again and again, the grand flying circle laced with thorns, the snake coiled, poised against my throat. The adder I face, bite me it shall, and I shall perish, I shall not stand like he, I shall succumb.

Buzzed, buzzing, always, again, buzz! Why must the fear run through me so, why must it all taste of salt, and not of sugar? Not one grain of sugar, not one. No, I am wrong, one, yes, my mind, thrown into woe, downward through that mountain chasm I fall, chasing the black smoke that eludes me, and there, yes, there, I taste it. My hands fiddle with a coin in my pocket, a smooth cold quarter, spinning, the lines, flat. With that speck of sugar, thus I sprout wings wider than any before seen. They spread across the world, enveloping all that is mighty, and they blow away the smoke of my life, the great rolling puffs of thick air, the clouded damp skies become wide and blue, the endless horizon, expanding forever further. So, I fly, never soaring low, I touch the cold waters of the shores of Greenland, the beauty of the thick wine and thicker milk, the beauty of eyes that no longer linger, all because of her. My beauty of light, the lingering passion, that sugar, the sugar, now seed, sprouted into the tree of my ages, grow within me great tree, and do away with this festering mold-soaked dirt of my life, do away with it all, all with all. I shall see the light.

So sweet and minute it is yes, then it thus fades with ease, in and out it flows, the endless cycle of it all. I dance about the skies, and then within the flight of my soul, it perishes, like a flame of a lit cigarette, snuffed. I plummet asunder, my beard growing, the length of grey, the endless descent of my doom, painted and portrayed for all to see with such endless ease.

The final letter, carved, alas, completed:

“Death to life, the sweet flower of wilted eyes, born to bloom, fallen into dust, the repetition.”

So, it is carved now, and so it shall be wiped away and carved again, and again. The endless sea, lapping away, less than before, leaving behind its dried white marks of salt at the shores of my heart.

** Noted Thought Two (The first): **

My feet break the road. The sound of rocks crunch beneath my shoes. I depart from my home, my mother still asleep in the early afternoon. The sounds of her nude snoring filled me with nervousness. Today, the sun seems to hang low, a pale face that frowns over everything. Over this pale face are cast thick clouds, the thick greyish lips that fold over themselves. A bright smile over an even brighter frown.

It is a cool day with this sun here, high. My heart seems to weigh heavily; mother always hates it when my heart is heavy. I haven’t been able to sleep well lately because of it, it is something new, I usually sleep well, but noises keep me awake.

I come to the end of the gravel road; the tall, overgrown steel fence hangs quietly against a tree trunk. A mist flutters through the air today. I haven’t left the property in quite some time, I think maybe about a week, or two? Time is becoming foreign to me, maybe if I sleep more it’ll get better. The road then fades into the dirt, the soft powdered dirt, a singing dried spring runs by the road, a stone bridge, twenty feet long, now it is covered in weeds. I decide to cross it. And over this bridge is no longer soft dirt, but now hard dirt. A thick crust, the sounds of my steps comes about as if they are stomps. A funny noise, a footstep, _tick_ , _titter_ , the _click_ , _tither_ , the _clack_ , the _clatter_. I love the feeling of the clad strikes on my toes through my canvas shoes. The feelings of small rocks and small leaves fill me with relief. The smell of the dancing trees. Trees to make a beautiful wall. The road widens further down, from before only three persons wide, now twelve or so, maybe fifteen! Along each side hangs pepper coated red corned trees, the beautiful long leaves that sit atop the twisted trunks with brown craggled bark. The rough kind of bark indeed, one to cut your hand!

I make it through the path, my eyes meeting the trees and foliage, and eventually, the trees come to an end, they stop, now open. A tall hill comes into sight, and way off, through the clouds, and their mouths, lingers a tall water mountain, with deep winding groves. Tall busheled oaks, ancient and slumbering beasts that welcome many weary travelers. Skinned pines that sway with the thick breeze, the flutes, and notes, the sweet cymbals that resonate from the floor. But the mountain is far away, through and over the great hill, it rests. But I will climb it, I will make it through the mountain, and the top shall be found. And from the top, I will drink the sweet and cool white water that ebbs the valley below.

A flatland covered in dark-leaved orange trees spans before my eyes as I climb through the hill, the beautiful leaves that eat away at the pale sun capture my eyes. I stop for a moment. I sit in the dirt, the beautiful cool dirt that is untouched by the sun. But don’t worry, I am wearing my long overcoat today, so my trousers won’t get ruined when I sit. A distant hum ignites in my nose, the breeze brings to me the words of sage and orange ripened eyes. The small blackbirds swoop through the sky, sweeping away the thin dust in the air. When I look up to see the hill from where I sit, I realize now, I am halfway to the top. I stand from my reclined state, I walk towards a tree, my eyes grow heavy, the thick padded skin that sags ever downward. I sit beneath the tall white tree, the soft brown grass cradles me as my eyes look up and meet the spinning light that fiddles amongst the leaves.

I open my eyes to find the sun still hidden beneath the clouds; the clouds themselves have grown darker. Much darker. The once puffy delight, the candy-like clouds, now, they have become riddled with uneasiness. They linger on the horizon, far, yet not too far. I stand from the arms of the brown grass, my back covered in scratches. I stretch my tight body, twisting around, and around, it slowly loosens, and I slowly start again. The path on the hill becomes thinner, the wide pathway reduced to strips of dirt, the rest washed aside by the storms a year or so ago. Sage bushes begin to fill the sides, coming closer. They cut my hands, the burning powder touches the wound. Ouch! Ouch! Don’t worry, nothing too bad, just having fun, I think. I barrel onward through the sage, now mixing in with it, is thicket. Deep and yellow, the color of a bright bit of wax. The thorns stick to my arms, the pricked blood protrudes from my skin, a deep pastel, a wonderful paint.

The path begins to curve alongside an even larger hill next to it, curving left, I make the turn and as I round it by, I see before me, a much longer path. Winding, and dipping, through dead groves and fallen plants, runaway bits of path, washed asunder by rain and storm fangs.

I walk further, the path growing and shrinking, the sun moving downward, the path ever-changing. I come to a small crevice, carved in the side of a large hill. I stop for a moment as my legs have grown tired. Inside, the dirt is red and thick, mostly clay, large white rocks protrude from the inside, a small burnt ring huddled in the middle. I sit on a stone, carved and shaped to fit a person, my legs stretch outward and are lifted on to a log. I look outward, the sun is along the side of the mountain, bright rays shine through, the pale skin shed, now the deep orange and even deeper purple hovering in the sky, the thick new skin, pasted over the sky. Such a wondrous thing, the beauty. A description, why describe? I always find myself pondering. Why? The thoughts, they, I don’t know. Maybe it is like a river, my mind, or, maybe all minds. Like a river, a greater river, perhaps some men’s rivers are made of water, some being clean and blue, others being black and awful, but perhaps other men’s rivers are the stuff made of stars? Perhaps? I like that. I think I ought to continue now. My legs are feeling better. I stand from my seat and head out of the crevice, towards the mountain. Strange, how he says that the language of the body is faded, dead, worked and spoken like a hobby. Strange. The mind does flow. Back through thoughts and things, random spurts, as if, maybe not random. Illuminated from some invisible candle. My heart pulses with joy at the thought again, of my goal, of coming to the very top of the mountain. To fetter and fade, funny, f, f in plural, fire, fade, fright, fight. Alliteration to roll off the tongue, a golden song. Humorous!

As I round another corner, I see a gate before me. My heart flattens, the joy of reaching the top now gone because of this. The gate. I approach it. My feet slide softly, the slow turning crunch of leaves and thistle occupies my mind. I am overcome. My heart. The heart, it flattens, the deep ridges. I shake the gate, it hardly moves, to the right, a straight drop, the rocks open, and mind waiting to be split, bones waiting to be broken. To the left of it, a sheer cliff upward, no way to climb, to go around. An end. Finality. Tears that roll, the water of the mind comes pouring out. A delayed sound breaks me. A wind blows the sun beneath the horizon. The sun creeps silently behind the mountain, drawing a final breath. My skin is puckered and chilled, my skin, tight beneath the wind. I turn my back to the mountain, and I begin my descent back down the hill.

~

I come through the tall trees; they brush against my face. The tall leaves, they wipe away any residue of the salted tears that had coated it. A rabbit comes through the bushes. Its eyes, large and black. They peer in me, the hopping noises. Always liked the hopping noise. Quiet, oh it speaks. What? No, a rabbit cannot speak. The whispers. Can you hear it? It wraps its words about your ears and kisses you good night. No, it can’t. He presses forwards, the dirt slides beneath him, his eyes. His, the voice, a man’s. No, rabbits can’t. He hops, the sounds of whiskers touch the air, a twitch of sound, my mind, my head, it hurts. The trees speak sweet words as I stand between them, the long whispers, hushed noise, my stomach grows full of dirt. It speaks, listen. Listen, the scraping noises of screaming words, the hopping rabbit has come to see you, a comet falling through the sky. He speaks. Listen. He stares at me. The soft twitch of his nose probes the air, hesitant, silent, he stands still. His ears move, the deep auburn fur rustles for a moment. The cotton, weaved cotton, the bouncing cotton. Sh. He hears the silent roaming words of the falling trees, shhhh, as the tall world spins and spins. My mind, cement your self, my feet, breathe, my feet are atop the ground, planted firmly, my toes in my canvas shoes, my hands in my pockets, my legs in my pants, shhhh, quiet. My hair is growing from my head, my throat is sore, my eyes are crusted. The rabbit grows, the long slender eyes become large and round, the great black expanses swallow me whole as he whispers to me. The whisper. Can’t you hear it? Yes, indeed the warbling sound, the gabbling sound, over and over and over and over. The warble. He speaks unto me in a voice that is mine, yes, my voice he speaks:

“I wished to climb the mountain so that I might die. So that I could taste the fresh greens that sprouted from the earth one final time. So that I could stare ever upward. So that I could touch the tip of the sun before fading away, so that I could taste for one final moment the great milk of the universe that binds all things together, so that I could fade from dust unto dust, so that I could relinquish my life and be extinguished like a small, mute, candle.”

He lifts his ears for a moment, and his feet kick from the ground, the dirt flung, his shadow, lost amongst the soft bushels.


	12. TWO

# TWO

The endless spectacle of the clown suit man seems to roam in my heart. Clowned soul, adorned in his Sunday best of white and black, his cone posited above his head, he laughs and plays with his friends of woe, no tears he sheds as he types the stories for all to read in bed, no weeping mess of him, the man alone, the clownly soul who dances in his ashamed freedom. No woe, no woe, nothing _but_ woe.

What? These are not my words? Who put this? This isn’t mine. I did not conceive of this, what? You did it didn’t you? You bastard. This isn’t me; this is you, let me be free, either make me my own or kill me sooner than later.

Not my love. The ideal soul of kindred kindness, how we all wish for ease and simplicity, but it is only granted when one is lost. When one soul fades into being a servant, then and only then can love become easy, only then do we see the creation of a proletariat and a bourgeoise, one to dine on fine kindness and scandalous affairs, whilst the other toils in his blood-filled smile while he loses his humanity. Oh, the folly to lose one within love. This then is not the highest esteem; the meat puppet of modern man, and the meat puppet, of the modern woman must not become a sole servant. Instead, they must fade within and without, one unto the other, a period of disquietude, yea, but joy for the spouse. Only for a moment, that is the danger, the bourgeoise may become greedy and swallow the man whole, or vice versa. If two become servants then nothing can be said of joy, the one bowing to the other, no master to guide the serving tray, nor to fill the padded papers with kind commands. But if one does become the master for the mere moment of this interaction, then it must be taken upon this person, male or female, not to stand as a whipping leader, nor as one who shackles, but one of kind equals, a farce of a master, one to command for a moment then to toss away this grand costume of supremacy to exchange it for that lowly loin cloth adorned by the other. Moment in moment they serve, and they stand, love, the joyous occasion of life, serve forever, ye shall succumb to suicide, serve for a moment, then lead, then ye shall feel splendor for a moment.

My love, the archangel of that which is impure, all that is pure, all that is and all that is not, my being of light and soul, my love, you, I shall serve you, and I shall lead you, I shall hold you against my bosom of joy, and you shall hold me against yours. The bright illumination of the endless worlds about us, the bright blue sun that shines to us, now in our disoriented love, the sky turned white, the clouds, rose-colored buds of shattered mirrors, let us feel the endless veins pulse as we become entwined in our infinity of love, let me feel the depths of you quiver beneath my fingers, and let me quiver beneath you. Let me be human for the first time in your arms.

The fair skies expand as I open my door to the world. The sickness bubbles as my hand guides the light. The sounds of children playing reverberates slightly. A red mower, the burnt oil, the humming, chopped noises of shears that create a world all unto itself. My skin, brightly burned by the light, my scabs and bruises soaking forth the froth of the tears that is the sun, the moon went from the shared sky. My bare feet singe for a moment in the grey concrete. No heads stop, no heads move. voices chitter. All, calm.

Why am I here? My hands graze the brown walls to my house, the sharp stucco points into me, the cuts on the tips of my fingers tremble. The world seems to revolve in slow motions today. My mind, the wandering dried sea, the foam in the sand. I need the mail, something important. I push myself on this day to go forward into the light, I need to look well for her, yes, I do indeed. A frail pale man can never woo his true love. But she shall love me, she must, it must, it can.

My mailbox, white and red, stands alone on the dried lot of dusted brown and yellow, swaying, standing, the peeled paint flaking off in every direction. I cross the yard, avoiding my fine lawn by walking on the driveway. Hardly a scuff, the present amount, clean, dirtied perhaps, but frequently cleansed by the morning fog. Nothing much to note, I always wondered what kind of hands the man who poured concrete would have. A firm man, with firm hands perhaps, certainly not gentle, I feel, women dislike the gentle touch. They might speak of softness and openness, but they lie. We all lie, the man wants a quiet wife, a follower, yet he lies, he demands a cruel woman. A reflection of the mother, or perhaps the opposite!

When I go to the mailbox, I make sure to use my right hand to open it, and paint flakes get on my fingers, a slight, white powder. Soft, it is. My left-hand raises into the air to grab the papers. These descriptions, my mind wanders through them all, electric, I do not, water, know why, gas, I have such tendencies to describe within, tuition, to do so, psychiatry, to endlessly, to bloat, to do such things in such a way. Right, today, the Wednesday I believe, today. Well, it must be, the sun is high, I don’t know, always. I decide to go back inside for a moment, the running pains of the concrete and the scent of asphalt linger all too well in my mind.

When inside, my feet are relieved by the cold tile. Cold and fresh, a water drug floor. My eyes need a moment. Always despised that, the flash of darkness, invisibility of the interior bleakness after seeing the divinity of the exterior. Perhaps it’s the other way around? The fleshy mush walls that coat me, the barrier against all time. My hands press, pressing, the contraction, the physical extension, the proof, they press against the walls to guide me. _Bare, bare, bare, banister, banister, banister, nothing, corner, turn, bare, bare, bare, painting, bare, bare, bare, corner, turn, bare, bare, bare, door._ I open the door, right again, white paint, the powder? The door is hot, hot heated surface, scalding impressions. The mind oft wanders to the majesty of irrelevance. Maybe that is, I close the door behind me, why the mind is so immense, the turning endless corners of it all, sets of three, I open the drier door, the light flashes on, maybe that is why the mind is such a shamble, an incoherent terror of nonsense, a great web of space and time, perhaps mere chemicals that connect to all things, complex, beyond us, I count, _sock, black, sock, black, trousers, black, shirt, white, underwear, blue, sock, white._ Just one? Lone. Everything in isolation, the grand symbol? Nay, I am not alone. Running in the shadows of my vampiric mind, I take flight away from this dim candle that illuminates the pitiful sized church!

Count, regress, the paradox of inversion, count in thrice words to be not a speck, the speck, ticking time that walks round. _Door, bare, bare, bare, corner, turn, bare, bare, bare, painting, bare, bare, corner, nothing, banister._ The point of entrance, the point of exit, my eyes now adjusted. I take myself up the stairs, mount professions of stairs, endless mathematical inquires that seem, my foot falls through the air, a terror overtakes me as I tumble for a moment, a terror, so rife, the potency and endless falling, I fall and fall, I shall never hit the ground, and when I do I shall perish! O God! My feet! Save me! I fall! My foot lands. It seemed, endless! Right. The spiral of golden ideals, math upon, oh damn, never mind it all.

I go into my room, down the hall, down it all, hallway hall. Door shut, the primrose rhyme-stoned cutting edge of time, thistle time. The Fair, right, Fair! Her favorite, song of sages and war, the song of a park kiss, where we lone, not truly alone, prying eyes to watch us, I, love her, I love, all, where are the bounds to my love? To my hatred? Alone. Again? I flee here again.

I put my clothes on, the man must look well dressed, tucked and tight, prim belt. Coat today? Far too hot for a long coat, best be short. No, not enough cover, I ought to wear long things, cover-up. Might get cold, summer nights.

I take to the street again, faces and people still present. I do not want to leave, I have to wait, wait for them to leave. Breathe in and outward, place your body in the present, this peace away from bleakness, I stand before the door, I tremble, the angst, insurmountable, in, my hands, in, my pockets, out, my back slouched, in, my shoulders tight, out, my knees bent slightly, in, my left foot, a scraping knife, the aged edge, piercing the skin as the pools of waste form and permeate, out, the ripping, in, my right foot placed slightly more forward than he left, out, my feet in my boots, in, my chest in my shirt, out, my waist in my pants, in, my legs in my, brooded bubbling tight ropes that take me round the roasted campfire, the trembling eyes, shaking deals, the love of fleeting nightmarish headaches, bloated, my world of complexities, the illusion, fading sights, fading love, she never loved me then, alone you are, beaten you were, you cannot escape the truth, run from the meekness, and it shall cut you open like the animal you are, a beast, the endless thing of time and space, run and run, plead for death, you do not deserve the draw of breath she has, you might write, and read, and toil over paint with pain, but you will never be as great as her, you will never deserve to live as she does, burn the bubbled skin as to repent, cut yourself open and take like your mother, you stole from them, aged happiness, and you, stealing minds, out.

The tripping tight rope of the heart that beats, yea, my life, upon the horizon of the explosion of everything, let us be spoken, for as we walk about the rocks of time, let us relinquish and serve, take away my humanity by treating me to death and doom, take away my humanity by feasting upon the blood and body of my fellow man. Symbol of truth, changing ways, changing times, yet man is still full of fear, even if he strolls alongside the beach in his silence and darkness, he is afraid, even if he sleeps head to toe with the deceiver (who never really deceived), he is afraid, even if he prays for death, or for physical power, he is afraid, even if he condemns fear and all who harbor it he is afraid (and oft he slips unto insanity). 

_In, and out, in, unity, and out, in, unity, and out. Breathe deep my son, and taste the aether of life, in, and out, taste the depths of the earth spirit, in, and out. My child, wipe your tears and tremble no longer, you are not bound by Abraham, but you are bound by yourself. You bind yourself, and you do not listen to the plea of the angel my child._

I place my hand, I place it, I move my hand. Breathe. I open the door. Light floods on me as I draw my breaths, clearer and clear. The distinct pain of my mind wanders away, the fluttering bug beneath the shadow of a leaf. The brown sands of time, whipping about in silent discourse, the tired times of the world, all fading away as I look upon the blank canvas of life itself. 

I begin down the street. I feel so light. Light of weightlessness, a feather, dainty empty strings that tore when they were plucked too hard. A harp in need of repair. Perhaps it is too far gone. My bones are encrusted deep within me, they weigh me downward with no force. A light battle, a floating demise, I ought to float upward through and through the skies.

Imagine it. A flight on a day of today. My body, slowly adrift within that light fluffed sea, the plucked chords of cherubs ringing downward, synthesized hums that bring me about the world, a brush of arms with a beauty in the air, a wondrous spirit of air, airy drift, she chuckles and blows on me. Her hair, white of the clouds, fair and waved, the deep blue eyes of her ring much like the ocean, yet in her, I see only calmness. She takes me by my hand and presses me within her bare legs, my head atop her thighs. Her pulsing blood, the sound of the wind, so warm, high up here, adrift above the world, floating about a forest of sweet dreams, floating above the stirring streams that leap about the heavens. Her tears fall on me, yet she is happy to cry. Her joy as I suckle upon her sweet tears, her joy, the unfolding warmth of her soulish womb that envelops us all. We take her arms for granted, as the great air seems to lift us above the lofty plains of life. Her arms, the soft and sweet warmth of a cloud so heavenly divine, the light of the sun that holds me to her, the binding of our souls, adrift, the blue sky grows pale as we float far away. Our bodies and souls unwinding, a great thread of essence fallen like a black spool, slowly tumbling, the looseness of her warm being, all about me. The rising tides no longer lap at my heart, the inky beating heart. No more tides to tear me to the dark sea of my ego, for now, I am blown here. A sailor on the sea, not in love with the gentle currents, but with the sky herself. Her waist curved and flowing, the great roundness of her soul, the beautiful wings, the gentle hums of her poetry that blows my humble red boat through the great grey waves. The soft words that cradle me unto sleep each night. The delicate words that bring me one step closer to God. 

My head jolts against the hard seat of the bus. It stopped. A hiss. Empty today. Why empty? Perhaps I missed all the people? I was busy after all. I have three more stops ahead of me. The bus driver, a man. Stout, not of importance. I am seated in the middle of the bus. The fourth row down, against the window. I feel a creeping scent linger upward, the scent of traveling words. A place of transit, the transit of disease, of gloom, of joy. A transit of economical possibilities. The winding, bumping rubber that burns on the side of the road. The lack of response from my love is endless. Yet it all goes. Forward and through the tall buildings and things that comprises this endless city. An endless city, a walking corridor of coffee stains and vagrancy. We are all vagrants, the wandering souls of men lost within these reflective towers, a testament to our failures. We can build a tower to tower, a great expanse, lingering into the limits of time, but we have lost the fight of inwardness, we have grown contented in our illusions of satisfaction _._ These kingdoms believe in naught simply because they cannot _see_ any of it. Alas, I shall criticize the distant people who look not upon me, I shall criticize their methods to their mindlessness, but upon the end of it all, I shall fall amongst them. In the silence of my last breath, in the final image thrown in front of me, in my tiny house, in my swinging death, in my lovers arms, I shall relinquish all greatness, and I shall become human. Endlessly human. **_Stop_** _._

The final draw of it all. I await the end. We resume. Grand plains of people fill the sides of the road, they all stand, side by side, the movement, all forward, all side, all backward, all in each way. The bus comes to a light.

A woman pushes a short brown door open with a delicate motion, cast forward from her right hand, her distant eyes squint as she comes out to meet the sun. Her left hand brought up to protect from the rays. She is in a white dress, touching the middle of her legs, her bright black hair bending in the light, meeting the midsection of her back. The sounds of her shoes ring loudly within the movement and motions of the rest of the city. A click, a second click, a third click. Click after click, her legs cross forward, she seems to be invisible, yet so visible. She has a dress like that, yes, she ought to wear it more often, fits her breasts and waist quite well. She pushes through all the men and women about her, walking slowly, yet with intent, calmness perhaps, maybe dissatisfaction. She turns the corner, a breeze motions through her frame, casting her dress to the right, toward the buildings. She continues forward, the clicks grow quitter, the distant sounds, so delightful, rousing something within. Chatter encases her as she fades, she opens a door to a bookstore and vanishes from my thought.

Meanwhile, a cab pulls up to the curb, yellow, the sleek black signals of the car’s stickers push bright reflections. A man opens the door, his right hand to open, and his right hand to close. He departs from the door loudly, yet the sound hides beneath everything else, beneath the clicks. His hair is sleek, brown, pulled backward, the shine of the midday light exaggerates the pomade, or gel perhaps. I used to gel my hair that way, in my youth, mother made me. Always wanted me to look nice for visitors. Hardly any. He fixes his white shirt collar beneath his grey coat, another shine strikes me, silver? Gold perhaps? A watch? No, a pin maybe. Can’t tell. He steps forward, his black shoes silent, his head turning left to right quickly as he goes sideways within the stream, his mind, determined, the ferociousness of his action, the endless power coming from his clenched jowel, his eyes lowered, quick movements as he assesses everything about him. He is determined, he is strong. He is the type of man who takes every moment in utter seriousness, a great man perhaps, a battler within the world of business, he- oh. He opens the door to a diner; he rushes back through the red booths and silent attendants. The bathroom door flies open.

They feel. The falsifications of endless actions, all like me (none like me), the automaton, the needles that pin us together in our steam engines and dynamos that power us. We walk, in and out. The mazed mind, ignored, the agony, unforeseen. A man takes a piece of food out of a trash can, he eats it. They feel, they are. It is endless, this is not the realism of depth, but the present horror of repetition. The ceaseless actions of duplication, the end of it all. **_Stop_** _._

Inward through the duck ponds. I am getting excited. A time to talk about me. A time to let myself fall into the babble of freedom, to rest my head against the velvet, and let my self be free of these binds. Free to be free, free beyond the slightest measure. Free now to taste of the endless limits. Perhaps I ought to eat afterward? I haven’t. How long? No matter. What do I want? I skim the menu of the store signs about me, all hidden, no, no, no, maybe, no. There is but my answer. What? What do I crave now? The endless motion. Why must it be endless? Why can I not rest within finitude? My stomach rumbles. I simply cannot wait. Excitement, the tingling joy about my arms and fingers, excited to explore the world in aphorisms and explosions. To feel the freedom and love. My love…what would she eat? She lingers upon me. Her impression, the vast impression. I see her in the forest and the sky. In all of everything’s purism. What? A sandwich perhaps. Simple. **_Stop_**.

Yes here. I stand from my seat in one quick motion, my eyes, they turn black for a moment, my legs, stiff. I continue outward. I get off the bus and step into the city.

My face meets the heat of the day, the fading heat. I never quite did enjoy hot weather, I seem to have preferred the damp, or the cold simply. Always wanted to see the Alps. Don’t have the gall. Maybe India, take my love there on our times away. After marriage. A sweet trip to the Nepalese area of course. Tantric deities, tantric spirits. Buddha, beautiful statues. I evade several people who almost bump into me. Quite busy today indeed. I step side by side, moving round and round, a fish swimming sideways almost. A funny sight to behold I am sure. A duly funny sight. I look forward, movement. I place my hands in my pockets and I continue. Where do I wade amongst these people? A group of men in black suits are seated outside a restaurant.

“Well really, the third quarter is a perfect example of what we should be doing.”

“Not really, while there was that spike there, it was only a spike, up then down so if we-”

“So, we should take what we learned from the first quarter and put it in addition to the third.” His tongue flicks. Three men, seated in three chairs, black suits, black tables, silver cards. They bicker over nonsense, word after word. I can imagine myself.

-Well, look who it is for Christ’s sake! Finally decided to join us for lunch?

-Yeah sorry, I answer, I pull my hair back with my right hand, I finally finished that report, so I figured I ought to visit you guys is all.

-Well, thanks for thinking of us sweetheart! We all laugh, a smile forms on our lips. Silence.

-So, have you finished the Finch report yet?

-Not quite, I still have some titles to sort out, plus they don’t even have eighty-two to eighty-five on file.

-Sounds like a fucking hassle. I lean back in my chair, my back cracks silently. I look around for the waiter. Who’s the waiter?

-Well, it’s a waitress, you sexist fuck! He flicks a toothpick in my direction. We all laugh, none of us understand. Wouldn’t it be sexist to have assumed it was a woman? Either, or, perhaps.

-So, uh-

-Well, shit for brains look who it is, a sweet piece of hot ass over there! We all look upwards. Sparrows looking for a hunter.

-Who?

-Well look, it’s Bob Streikton! We all groan, there was never a woman, never a hunter. He laughs.

-You know, even if it was a woman, what you said right there wasn’t appropriate.

-Well, who the fuck are you to tell me how to treat fuckin’ women?

-So, are you some prophet now, sent to grant us all-mighty wisdom? Oh, praise him!

-Not quite, I think, what we have here, is a Greek god in our midst. I think we ought to bow down to him. They all scowl at me, the warped faces set with the grain of the era. The distant workings of men and peoples.

-I didn’t mean-

-Well, _we_ know what you meant, asshole. You just always do this shit everywhere you go, you either criticize us all with your “moral supremacy”, or you fucking rattle off some fucking poetic bullshit. You know it gets annoying to have to listen to your bloated turgid piece of shit monologues every fucking day at the office.

-So, you can just go fuck yourself. They rise, in unison, the great cloaked beasts alike me, stand from the table, departing in mere moments, their motions smooth, eyes in stone, cast downward upon all else. I bump into a woman. She pulls aside from me before I could apologize. That place was of no use anyways. No need for a memorial of uselessness, to make friends with men. A brutal beating to one’s face, their heart always left intact. Perhaps that is their weakness? They kill each other’s bodies, yet ne’er a soul is to be touched.

My mind now free of fog returns to the terse excitement that riled me before, the flashing blue light, the message of my love, the sight to be beheld by all weary eyes. The time to come, to be free, to share the depths of one’s soul, and break into totality. To taste of man’s kindness and suck gently upon the nectar that pours from his heart.

The doors open wide, the large lobby smells of pined chemical freshness, the automation is rife. When did we decide to merge the two? Why lie to ourselves? Why cast our souls into the illusion with fake scents?

“Name?”

I respond with silence. My mind blank, the empty whites shining with fear, I can’t remember, I can’t. Right, the card. My hand shakes, cold hands, and cold soul, my body, the blaze of orange about me, I hand her the card. She looks up at me. The blue eyes. She neither smiles nor frowns, her face, bent like a witch. Hands casted in plastic blaze, she ignites the whirring ledger of our names. Turning bent butter, the time of arrival reads four thirty-two, p.m.

The rising tide of my heart rips upward, the sounds that eat at my foul soul, the being cast in temptation. My heart rising, lifted by the hearty starry sea, the drudgery of growth, the drudgery of work, of blood unto toil, the endless transition of time and space. Reflection unto death.

Oh, the majesty of it all. I press the button next to the elevator. A sticky residue is placed on my hand. My right hand. A moment. The mechanical whirring clunks in my head, sounds of levers and cranks that hum quietly, almost in silence, buzz. Buzzing buzzes, the buzz. The doors slide open, a shrill ding fills my head. Like school, the ringing click of passage, class after class, that’s when it began, when everything was sealed together, when the time was lost.

I stand inside the elevator, lone. Lone pine tree soldier, carved red teeth, tossed to the fire. Here I am, the rising sound of the button shines silently, always all silent and sleek, the ascension begins, the time rises, throwing me downward, the speed goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and goes, the whistle of air and her skin ripped open, her scream, a while in the air, yes, orgasmic, the reaching skies, the reaching infinity, yes! Claim me your child of heaven, O pleasure! Free me from my binds as I speak my pouring words of life! The doors open.

I step through the doors; the carpet is hard, cracked and old, worn fur stapled to hard concrete skin. Sounds of the screams, the brass piano. My illusion pasted thinly. The illusion, my life but the repeated steps of a man before me. I walk to the door, straight. I knock. An answer. I open. Here, I sit.

“Hey there! How are you?”

“…”

“Well just come on in and sit down!”

“…”

“So, this is our thir-, nope our second session together. And so, I just wanted to know if you’re ready to speak?”

“…”

“Well, it’s fine to take your time, I can just wait with you.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

I don’t have the words.


	13. AUTUMN

# AUTUMN 

My lips drink from the clear glass. A fine day to set fire to my skin beneath the sun. Damn pedantry! Ventriloquist's hands guide me from the chair where I sit facing towards the glass door. I open, no not quite. I stand. Where? I hover beneath the shadow of my soul, trembling beneath the door. I am too tired to go on. I am, restless. Take me forward great seer! Take forth from my mind the reigns of my life! Take me over great _prophet_!

He drinks from his glass, recalling other moments when he drank before, not from that glass per se, but rather things of that nature. He recalls the many fluids that had entered his throat throughout his life, thick, creamy, watery, rotted, sweet, and tart. He then sets his glass down on the white counter and spins around, staring blankly at the open, white walls in his dimly lit kitchen. After a moment of this staring however, his eyes fall upon a large dent in the wall where a portrait once hung, a crushed and crumpled surface, the white powdered sheetrock covering some of floor.

Quite abruptly however he then takes to leaving his house. This is quite strange, even for him, as he is not a comfortable person, or at least one who is comfortable with leaving his house. The bright Tuesday air fills his eyes for many moments, even after he had held his hand upward to relieve them. In front of him is his yard, something that still manages to thrive, despite his lackluster care of it. Bright white flowers line up throughout the scattered grass, and the sounds of flying bees fill the quiet nature around him. The chirps of a Magnolia Warbler override the bees, and as the bird continues its song, it causes him to peer everywhere in a slight frenzy so that he might find the bird. He does not. He then proceeds down the grey stone path that winds through his flat yard, and that leads to a small stone circle with three chairs. He sits in the left chair, as it is the only chair that can support his weight. He very much has a disdain for weather like this, and he thinks to himself how much nicer it would be if the weather was rain, and not shine. He had spent many days in his youth watching the rain fall, as he imagined they were small souls descending from the skies. He, however, knows very well that they are not small souls, but rather mere droplets of water. He recalls in his chair, beneath the sun, a very rainy day that he had very much enjoyed. It was about six years ago; however, he is not aware of the exact date. During that time six years ago, he was lodged at an orphanage in the southern areas of California. It was not a religious institution and was instead funded by the government at that time. He was very comfortable there physically, however, his soul was ripe and rotten with terror and sorrow. He had tried to take his own life using a small razor knife several times, and was eventually transferred to a mental institution. It was that day that he recalls quite well, the day of his transfer.

It was the perfect degree of rain, coming on only several times throughout the day, each time lasting only two hours. The rain was very soft and very cool, which felt very nice on his skin as the prior week itself was very hot, and nearly unbearable. He remembers the ride to the institution quite well, relishing the images of the large green fields that were full of cows, the sweet cows, small bunches huddled about trees, and hidden beneath leaves. The tall mountains that loomed in the back stick out to him very well, specifically their great white boulders that hung like moles on the back of his mother, the great rocked skin that held even greater amounts of barren landscapes. Beyond these mountains, he had seen the mist of snow that fell on hidden peaks, the beautiful white dancing light that hung high, sweet and soft. The sun was hidden behind the wandering sheet of clouds that day, however, it still permeated its thin layers of heat through the thick sheet of grey.

In addition to these fond remembrances, he also recalls the beauteous car he was seated in, as it was very large and open, and he had the whole of the rear seats to himself. He remembers the scent of the cool leather-wrapped seats, and how the smells of burnt dust filled his nose. He also enjoyed the chrome interior and the wood door panels, as he had run his fingers over the waxed knots and grain of the wood. In addition to this, the color of the exterior, a bright blue, paired with the white seats had filled him with joy. However, his arm had begun to ache amidst the ride, and did not stop aching until he had arrived at the institution, which was about thirty minutes later.

Upon arrival, he had to wait for the driver to open the door for him. The driver was an older woman, with a bent and wrinkled face, yet she was by no means unattractive. He imagined she had a wonderful singing voice, yet he was never able to confirm this. The reason for his waiting was that the doors were locked, so that he could not throw himself out of the car in the midst of the drive. He felt this was unnecessary for him, and thinking back on it now, the mere thought that they had expected him to leap from the car, and tumble into the deep dark road beneath him, fills him with rage. He was by no means sick enough to do something of that nature.

After she had opened the door, she then proceeded to lift him from his seat and hoist him into the air, her grip was firm, and upon recollection now, he can still recall the grip on his right arm. This causes him now to shift in his seat outside in discomfort. But soon, his mind wanders back into recollection. She had lifted him, and she proceeded to guide him to the door, her shoes dug deeply into the gravel road that led up to the concrete passageway of the institution. After they had made it to the front door, two men took him by the arms. Both were tall and wide, dressed in white, with a thick black belt. They spoke nothing to him, and to his supreme amusement, their grip was less firm than the lady who had held his arm a moment ago.

Suddenly he sits upward, the sound of a car hissing beside him jolts his body forward, his muscles tighten, and his eyes are filled with blood as his heart leaps between his lungs. A pain fills his stomach as he vomits suddenly. He does not feel very well. He has not felt well for the past several days. To him, something feels off, however, the truth is, his body is reacting, and acting at a perfectly healthy level. Suddenly too, he returns unto his leisure, as his heart is now calm and his eyes are clear, and the bile in his stomach, expunged.

Then he returns, or perhaps, not perhaps, he returns. A solid standing of his mind these memories are. Perhaps otherwise, no not perhaps, he returns. The scent of sweet honey, yes, the honey of the institution filled my nose as, then he recalls the delectable tastes of the aroma, and the patterned floors spiraled upward when he walked in. The room was frightful, the lashings, the terror, the screams, the sweet honey washed woman who bathed me, the, he then proceeded toward the front office, but rather, he was carried to the office, in which this makes him chuckle now, no one was screaming, the terror. I wish to, he then returns to his memory, the swift whimsical dreams of a beautiful day. They plugged me, plugged me full of beatings and pain, the noises and scraping dishes, a whisper, and whispers filled my mind with such terror. They plugged me full of, he then recalls the many hours in which he spent under great care, but on that day, instead, he simply sat in an office, talking to a delightful, and handsome young man with slick black hair, and a slightly grey mustache. No please, do not fret friend, my dear friend, you have granted me control for a whimsical recollection, you had fought away my partner, but do not fret friend, I am your companion, I speak the truth unto you. He then returns, his eyes close, and his mind wanders back to, and so where, yes! There! So he was, about the doctor’s office, in which he was questioned. He had refused to answer the questions, not because he wasn’t enjoying himself, he surely was. It was simply because he was too preoccupied with the droplets of rain that fell from the sky, the bits of dancing eyes and tones that pranced upon the great green globe.

Suddenly then, he had turned to the doctor and asked for paper and pencil, so, the doctor provided this supposed young lad with the materials he requested. And as he did so, the doctor hummed aloud the tune to the Twenty-fifth symphony by Mozart, a sweet and gay tune that conjured about the atmosphere an utterly tart drip of chocolate whimsy.

He had then taken the plain white paper from the doctor, the subsequent pencil, and wrote quickly. The doctor then took the paper from the young boy after he had finished writing, and read it aloud, firstly clearing his voice, then smoothly and delicately began:

_The sweet sounds of dearest,_

_The hums of my depths,_

_The great mighty dearest._

_Dearest, I hold you,_

_You, my untimely doom,_

_The sweet sounds_

_Of sweet death,_

_The taste, the touch,_

_The boiling grey_

_Grips of your clutch,_

_You, my dearest_

_Dearest ever,_

_Autumnal weather._

The doctor chuckled for a moment, then he proceeded to place his firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, gripping it softly. The hairs of the doctor’s hands had stood in stark contrast to the white shirt and is thus the clearest thing he can recall from that day.

The doctor, after placing his hand on the young boy’s shoulder then proceeded to take out a folder, write the boy’s name on it, place the paper in the folder, and ultimately had put the folder in a tall green filing cabinet to the left of the chestnut desk. During the filing of his poem, he had then taken the time to stare aptly at the rest of the room, making note of the white tiles, the teal typewriter with silver inflections, and the bronze lamp that was seated on his desk. Another thing he remembers quite vividly of the office is the large bookshelf that loomed behind the desk, it was dark, as dark as the desk, but the lighting had changed his perspective, he realizes now. Throughout the whole of the bookshelves, he had seen many books written by Jung, and other, less notable men. During his peering about, the two men had suddenly returned, and had picked him up by his arms once more, taking him away to a small room in which he had to strip nude. He was then carefully washed by these men, and was dried, and clothed in a white garb in less than fifteen minutes.

By that time, it was night, so they asked if he was hungry, and he politely refused, so they brought him to a small white room with a wired mattress. The room was empty, the door was shut and locked. There, he stood for a moment, standing in front of the thick glass on the first story. Staring out to the deep grey clouds that turned into a black horizon. He had felt long hot tears on his face, strolling down, as he then crawled into his bed, and fell into the clutches of autumnal slumber.

Suddenly, his eyes open, and he is left here, now, watching the pink clouds melt away from the sky, reducing forever forward into nothing but a deep turning air of infinite phantoms. His soul rested, his mind full of nothing, the fruits of life breathe still and bright for one moment, as he sees now, everything giving way unto ash.


	14. ONE

# ONE

I want to live. I want to crawl around the earth on my four limbs, to feel the warm white sand graze against my chest. I want to feel life free from the vices of everything about me. I want to want. I want to want more than any other human before me. I want to crawl from my hovel and I want to stand tall, I want to not ride on the backs of giants before me, but to stand alone, tall and still, in the strong wind, in the cold winters, in the hot summers, in the days where the universe attempts to will me away from life. I want to be different.

I open the bathroom door and walk into my bedroom, I take my pants, button, pull, my shirt, over, through, my socks, on, on, my boots, on, lace, on, lace. Ready. Coat, right. The cool dense wool grazes over my bare forearms, I lift it to adjust it about my shoulders, my heart begins to tick, the beating drums with brass winds. I button, one, two, three. Now, ready. Always that way, no other, habit begets sanity. Yes sanity, that fleeting bit of cheese caught in the jowel of a dead rat. Sanity. The only thing to take and to have, to pluck from the cold teeth of the one who was insane enough to touch the trap. Sanity, the bit of cheese. Small enough to sustain, not large enough to be full.

I have to go today. My body aches with a fever as I stand beside the door. My toes tap the ground, I began to sweat, my mouth, pools with clear thick spit. I tap my foot. The floor echoes through the house. Louder, faster, louder faster. I tap, and my eyes glaze over the knob, I see it. Open it, run, yes don’t you see it, tomorrow you can run and taste it. Just open the door, you can do it. Do it, I can't, do it. You’ll make it, run from this house and never come back, throw yourself in front of nothing, escape this coffin, run and find her. My feet tap, slow again. My breathing, the random cutting noises. Through my nose, nothing else, in and out, through my nose. Begin. Begin. Take the door. Open it and spin about your life like a bee about its flower, pollinate. No more allegories, no more pedantry, no more bloated prose. Run. Run. You can. You can’t. Can’t you taste it? The flavor? The failure, the rough fuzzed bits of meat, they line your teeth, the stale flavor of a meal eaten three hours ago, the rough bits of food caught. Don’t you? Taste it. Revel in the rough bumps. My toes tap, the soft bouncing noises of my burbling chest fills my head as my feet grow louder.

I tap. My body shakes, the blood that pulls itself around my limbs is now located about my heart, the fast movement, my arms grow numb. My fingers and toes reducing to white specs of skin, the shaking. I bounce. My legs grow heavy, then light, I grip the wall, so I do not fall over, take the firm grip, and stabilize the crippling bastard. Tears begin to run down my face, the coarse course of them burns me, the rough sores and cut lips fill with the sour saltiness of my tears. I take the handle, the door, it flies, the great brown barrier flung behind me, my feet take to the ground, thrusting through the dirt, silence as I walk. My breath, the black fog from my mouth.

I step from my cave, the sun comes through the barrier, rising from the back of the mountain, stretching through the great white trees that soar over the resting homes. The tan tile, the tan walls, the lone bushes primed with dew, all shining clearly as the sun finds itself grappling through them, fighting for the sky, it pulls my eyes upward, the bright sun, its hands falling through me, the great beauty, she reaches her hands out to me as I stir in horror. Her beauty, I see it, it was her this whole time, each morning, and each night she comes and she departs, the great babe of the world, the great babe that swoons me, the great sounds of my feet propelling against the floor. I am nude. My body enveloped beneath her. I fall in silence and she catches me, the great abyss of Aries stares at me and laughs, she covers my ears. Her great white skin, the beauty of it. The rose, her burning endlessness, the great expanding soul to lift me through the heavens, my body pulled away, the rosebud of my skull opened wide, a great plum fruit plucked and kissed as her lips trace me. A power fills my chest as I continue running, my legs are pulled tight, the faces of the world meet beside me to greet me as I run, my feet flinging the dirt and ash of years before. The sounds of yelling and cheers meet my ears as I ascend further. The beauty. Her sun, I run, the sounds of bullets pass by my head as I am raging through the tall pine forest. A grip of smiles, the grip of smiles. It grips me. Her beauty, I see it through the face of their trees, the sun, her beauty, always beside me, lifting me, take me, my love. The warm sun, the chilled shadows. I stand before you upon the face of this great cliff, you, your radiance and rounded psyche, the mystery of your essence, me, the master, the slave, the dualism of failure and success. I am born to bear this burden, for my creator had me so, and for that I love him. I stand before him, but above all, I kneel before you, my love. The sleeping thing beneath the black shaded curtains. The great swirling masses of purple smoke and deep white lights of stars, you, your hair of great white fire, I kneel before you, the silent spring of radiant mist that pushes me higher, that fills me with such delight, kill me so that I may rest with you, O my blessed virgin take me to your palace and hold me. I kneel before you my love, my master, let me feel you beneath me as I love this life. I stop. My feet meet a pit. A black pit, a great void. The cliff that stretches before me. I breathe, my legs are covered in small tears of tight muscle. I breathe heavier than ever before. I smile greater than ever before. And with one pause, I decide. That I shall cast my humanity unto the flames. I shall crucify my soul and be reborn of soul, as I had of my body, for her, she shall love me with all her soul, the great woman who does not even know my name.

I tap my feet before the door. My silent tapping. I am full of something new, my mind was thrown, I felt it, her embrace, I felt it, I know. Her, the great deity. Her, I felt it. Yet here I stand before the door, the silent door, the firm door. I take the handle, and the door creaks open, the sound of dried hinges in the dry air. I close the door, and I grope the book that rests against my breast. The sun lingers behind the houses, a hesitant rise. Ice melts calmly from the tips of the grass, filling the air with fresh steam. A scent of cut grass, an earthen blaze, it all fills my nose. My eyes pass by the stirring houses. I ponder.

A great shackled hole. We built these houses to escape the prisons of all else, yet we too are enslaved here. In our pits of tedium, where the pendulum comes and we are never saved. Until our eyes draw their final image we tick and tock through this tumult. We dive through great seas of grey fire, of mediocrity, we suffer more than the decadent, more than the hero. We suffer here. In great glass holes, great tied knots. I feel tired with myself, my words all said before, all one, these thoughts, all falling into everything, and then, they become nothing. These things, everything spinning to God, everything spinning away within our beating soul, to noumenon, to beyond. We fear pain, yet we writhe in the grandest heights of ecstasy from it.

My feet stop at the edge of a curb. I lean my head forward, looking right, left, then right. My feet fall, a silent step. My left foot kicks a small white rock and it is sent tumbling into a drain.

Into a drain, all great things must fall, yes. It falls into that running river of sludge so that it can fall through the other end, through a new street, so that it can meet a new rain and be white once more. Then all too soon it must meet another foot, and the path continues. Time and time again the empires are forged through their repetition, the belief of the highest whole drives us forward, yet there is no greatest finality, there is no utopia, for men are not gods, and therefore our society can never be godlike. Where was I? Before, I found myself. Before, a thought I trailed on…utopia, Nietzsche, his ascetic ideals…right. Rightly so Nietzsche believes the philosopher ought never to be married, and many others too, Descartes, Schopenhauer, all the others who restrained themselves, the sleeping man who ponders with “freedom”. They, of course, have never felt the freedom of love that I am within the possession of.

I make to the other curb; my feet hop up briskly. I increase my speed, placing my hands into my coat pockets as the sun has not met me fully yet. For now, it hides behind the great humane towers, the early sleeping spirit.

Right, freedom. They proclaim that it is just another distraction, that men of that caliber must place themselves in freedom, but, as Nietzsche has pointed out, these men are not free. But Nietzsche does not know freedom in love. While the self is given away in one penny with courtship, it is given back in a thousand pennies with union. For the great men ought to be capable of wandering that great desert of loneliness and resting beside the sweet oasis spring of his spouse. The beautiful clear water and overgrown marbled towers with a small white flame burning inside. The great man knows when to rest, and when to return. To dismiss love simply because one has not felt love is the mark of a fool, and to attack the femme because he was turned away, too makes him a fool. And for this, Nietzsche is a fool. But alas, it is the fool who rouses great and genuine laughter, and never the king upon his throne.

I cross another road, hoping once more down and over. Slowly, I meet a hill, descending to a plain. The plain is full of yellow weeds, about the height of my ankle. Scattered through and around are the nests of gophers, and there, the rodents scurry beneath the dirt, shaking the ground above. The sun lightens the long yellow field, and with it, small pocked shadows fall everywhere. I walk through it, clenching my book within my pocket for a moment, and the single match in the other. The field spans about my eyes, great waves of minute yellow waste, a vague scent of freshly tilled soil fills my nose as I almost fall through the ground. It goes on, lingering for a half-mile, and through the end of it, I see a great forest, hidden from the resting sun. Trees that stand still beneath the shadows of mounded houses, great pines that grow through destitution and joyousness, great pines that sway with no wind, great pines that live in great silence.

A truck passes by the road, a white beast that lurches through the asphalt, hesitating for nothing, a meaningless beast, a monster of nothing. It creeps through the road, my eyes hold tight to it, and quickly it falls into nothing but sand, disappearing behind the houses.

My shoes scrape at the dark icy dirt. Roots and twisted things stick from the ground. A dark entanglement of the mind, so I go forward, traversing through the branches, trembling under fear at the thought of the great she-wolf.

My heart quickens as the shadows span over me. I look upward, a black feather lingers through the white air, falling softly, the twirling imagination. I blink. The feather vanishes. My feet step lightly through the ground, breaking twigs without hesitation, the needles stopping and snapping beneath me. I linger about the course of the trees, touching the thick sap, wrapping it about a stick, a long lichen ridden stick. My body weeps in this grave silence, this grave wandering silence as I wrap the leaves and dried waste about the sap stick. I carry it in my left hand. I move to the left. My eyes meeting the floor, tracing the hints and outlines of branches.

I come across a dead crow, a gentle crow, large and cumbersome, it fell from the sky, a great beast struck between its heart and lungs, with the great poison of the air. I sob, falling to my knees, holding it against my chest, my lips pulled tight in agony. My eyes close, the red leaves sowed shut. I open them, I stand before nothing, my heart is calm, no tears, no crow, nothing that lingers. A distant drip of water begins, the sun expands within the branches, I see it, yet no light, no light shines here. I walk through the trees, the great spread of pines, clustered about themselves, lost within themselves, the call of a harpy rings in my throat. A chill through me.

The mind is shapeless. The great men who wish to label it are but fools, but so are those who refuse labels. For human nature, and the humane intellect itself cannot begin to make sense of any and all if it does not stand in scripture. In written words we reveal a truth of everything, we hold tight to these leaves and complex branches, a mixture of chaos that we wish to prune. To prune the chaos and cast it aside, to burn it and do away with it. Who can blame the poor souls who wish to burn this pain? We must not burn too much, for we risk the loss of beauty, the chaos reduced to fine straight spears, protruding from the ground, petrified to grow a branch, petrified to grow a single leaf. A falling leaf, the spinning circle, ah yes, watching the brown leaves descend to the ground, my bandaged arms, the singing tunes of faint music, the hums of cigarette smoke. The quiet banter of nurses. Dismissive and forlorn, even among the sick souls. Come here now, take your medicine, a foul droplet, the soft tabbed pill that dissolves, yuck, the taste of dirt. I still took it, would much rather eat dirt than that pill.

I leap over a stream, a great, a _thin_ , stream. The trickling sounds of water touch my bladder, the full up pouch. Pardon. A detour pulls me away from the carved cared path, standing stone, legs spread past the shoulders. Pardon once more, forgiven, spread. Mmm, hesitating, blow, running, drip, shake, dry. There. Better. The sounds of water take my mind as it swims through the chasm, imagining myself shrunken. Would it be the same world? The trees two hundred times as large, a trip over a stream expanded to days, would it? A great journey fit for any books, my eyes sway with the images, the rising sun, spanning about the sky for months. Oh, great thought, the complexities, and imaginations, whisked away to a dancing troupe of thought. Oh, oh, always with oh I think, a great cliché indeed, oh! The stick reminds me of its presence as it stabs itself into my leg, a sharp bite, a sharp sting. I drop the stick in my pain, sap covered my left leg, the damn thing. I lift the pant leg. There it is, the warm dripping rain, a drop of a vast red ocean pulled out through my pale leg. I dab it and eat the sop, the sweet iron sop. Nothing to worry, the great dap of saliva, great nothingness. Always enjoyed that smell, made the one nurse nauseous though. Repugnant she thought, why there? Why does my mind trail so much now? Recall, the similarity. Ah, indeed, the sounds of the dark forest, the sight of the dark forest, grown about the window, the clear canker window, smudged and hardly cleared. I wanted to walk through that wood. Now I suppose I can.

The clown in Dante’s garb, the clown with the crown and red skin. The clown. A funny sight, the red nose to match the red skirt, a funny sight. A honking clown in the bowels of hell and upon the rose. Funny sight. My hands rest by my side, the stick tight to the left, my right, to my right. A rank stench touches my nose, a bog of sorts. Its repugnance forces me to the left, I dart away. My eyes water, a stinging stench, a foul smell of shit that fills my mouth, a taste so foul. I look up after a moment, there, I see it. Where I have been headed. I walk.

A great drop over, the great expanse of forest, the great spanning sea. See, I see it. The swaying variations of greens, the wind that harmonizes them in their discord, the dank forest below. The sun now touching the top of the valley below, touching the tips and depths of the trees, those trees, distant, those, ever-present. A clear sky above them, the yellow sun, the babied-blue sky, a sweet range of flat colors that dance with themselves. A breeze laps at my feet, chilling me for a moment. I sit at the edge of the cliff, a great brown death below. I sit. I stand. I place the sap covered stick on the ground, the wet damp noise it makes. I grab a handful of dried needles, covering the stick. I light the match within the matchbook, a spark, the phosphorus, the porous swinging scent that riddles my nose, the beauteous scent. It fills. I place it on the flecks of bits, and poom! It lights, the soft light, the soft sparking ember, my breath darted, the dash of flames. Larger it grows, the warming white fire, the warming red sight. It moves clearly, the waving hands that linger with the wood. I add more sticks, many are wet, and the dry ones are seemingly gone. No, no, no, there. Found it. The sticks, light and thick, the heavy ones later, they go over the flames. It burns, the great tendrilled flame. The fire continues, my face now met with the drying prose of the flames, the front heated and tight, my eyes watering, the back still yet cold and quivering. My hands cover the flames, looming above, they are warmed, over, through, in, over, the scent of the home takes me. The raging fire within the steel box, concealed in my wooden house filled with tinder smoke, the black smoke, my lungs of soot at times. My eyes meet this flame in front of me, the, oh, more branches, the fire, can’t let it be snuffed. My face shocked by cold air as I turn away from it, the blinking of my eyes to dispel the water. I grab more branches, now, fit, yes, over, the fire continues.

…

…

…

It is ready. Ready. The chimes fill my lungs, the drums, my chest. I take the book from my breast, it reads, _Human, All Too Human_. I take it. I hold it against the bright sun that touches the flames, the great white sun that stretches over the book. The great testament to our failures, the great tomorrow that we must seek, the great rebirth. Taken now. My heart fills, it is drained. My eyes meet my own eyes. A pause. Wait. The sounds of fog fill my mind. Fill, filling, always, my empty sea of dredged mind, always being filled by another hand, another thing, so dastardly, full of sperm whales and Dublin meats, full of things that are not my own. The lurking white thickness, it blooms. The blooming ash that falls on it, the sounds of a battle fought through the night, the shells buried deep in the sand, they wait, the eyes meeting nothing but fog, trenches full of water, the smells of gunpowder. It begins, slowly, the soft bullets in harmony, the tan hats that come through the dirt. I see it. My hand raises the book higher; my teeth open in the wind as I sprint through the field, the gun pressed against my chest, I scream as the bullets fly, yet no noise is made as my eyes fill with blood. Blink. Before the fire I sit, the great white fire, it burns and tosses, the bones of a dozen dead birds are there. I see it, it is tossed in the flames. It smolders through, the puffed pages begin to curl, the puffing pages. Words and bubbled ink. Pause, the slowing times. Fast, it burns me, my eyes meet the fire that stretch around the book, the warm embrace of tomorrow meeting yesterday. The testament to my failures, the testament to a time that we can no longer live. I see it in my legs, bending and folding beneath the pages, the crisped edges. I see it. The sun, how it shines over my barrier, the great enveloping hands of harps and burning embers that are reduced to ash, my arms grow tired, the cold air, the warm flames. I take the book from the depths of the fire with my left hand, I proclaim in agony, my hand charring, caught ablaze, the sap residue lit, I hold the book against the sun and shadows, I scream, my screech echoes through the heavens, the trumpet not of the angels but man. My scream rings through my hand, tight, the face of many men still burns in my hand, this shall be the day, this shall be the day that we face the God within ourselves and we find Him breathing. This shall be the day that the old shall be learned from and duly tossed aside, this shall be the day that the Geist shall run no longer, this shall be the day that I shall find it. My hand clenches the book, I throw it through the great ravine, it rumbles downward, the rocks pulverizing the decayed and frayed edges. With my hand soaked in fire, I stagger. My skin bubbles away, a tide of white flesh is reduced to red, then unto black, it chars, I toss it to the dirt, snuffed out. I look at it. Tears fall outward, the artillery blows away my side, the great doom.

My teeth open wide, and through them begins the sounds of spit and spite. My voice, the saintly song to the heavens, my voice, the trumpets notes from black gates, my voice, the shrill poem of the sick, my voice, the scarred opera of the vile, my voice, the thorned stem without its flower, my voice, the flowing ebb of lost joy, my voice, the coarse overcoat about a blue body, my voice, how it expands through the waving pattern of the forested lake that rests forever onward, how it echoes for millennia. My lips turn white and pink, gapped and split, the breathing sigh of torment, my lungs rip open, a split open apple full of tossing grubs. My eyes reduce to ash and darkness, I tumble over, my body beside the flame, I see it flicker for a final moment as my soul swoons to endless rest.

~

I awake by the pile of black sticks, my hand is covered in deep flakes, cracked and split meat, a pink strip of muscle between the plates of burnt flesh. As I lie there, my lips unfold, and I speak softly beneath the arms of the great sky:

_Ringing bright_

_The yesterday_

_We all fight._

_A distant ash,_

_A rumpled fallen over drudgery,_

_The words of boiled ink,_

_The same as boiled skin._

_The burning crucifix,_

_My sacrifice,_

_This is._

_A sacrifice like all others,_

_A sacrifice like no other._

I stand from the ground, my knees popping, sounds of chain ripped gas saws in the forest below stifle my concentration. I begin my walk back, tripping through the black sticks and still warm soot. My eyes close and open, time and space eradicated with each succession. My skin fades for a moment, and my outline is blurred, my eyes close.

~

Rippling crack, frightful and wet, skin of red orange hue, coming to see fruit. 

I move through the house, passing into the silence. Slowly, my feet graze the stairs, scuffing silently as the faint splashing of water is heard upstairs. I climb the stairs in heavy, uncalculated movements. When I stand before the bedroom door, I pause, my eyes staring into the dark and shuddered place. Water, side by side against the porcelain tub. A faint light spirals from the crack of a bathroom door, a faint hum of a voice begins. Something foreign and present, the hum of a woman in my head. The water, still splashing softly, the sound of breathing, almost jagged, afraid. I push the door open, a silent swinging door, white and prim, open with my right knuckles. My shoes, still hardly coated in noise touches this new floor. I feel my body overtaken, my blood slowly turning into ink. I uncontrollably step through the room, inching, stepping, moving, crawling, creeping towards that cracked door. My hand is throbbing in pain, the pain of fire still lingering. I do not wish to keep forward; I do not wish. My body fights against me as the door grows larger, as the sound of water latches deeper into me. I am planted against the bathroom door, my eyes, seeing the yellow light fully. A person is seated in the bathtub, a young man. He does not see me, his eyes and mind closed to the noises of the printing press. The door opens against my will, my hand still pressing, my hand still throbbing. Water presses into my left ear, fire to the right, cooled and burnt, I am still pressed forward. Please don’t. Have I not killed enough? Please don’t make me. Please, I beg you, let him live. Don’t make me plunge him to ash. Please. Forward, I move. My breathing growing heavy, tears permeating from my ducts, my blue eyes meeting the pale skin seated in the clear nude water. My hand stretches forward, clawing though the air, the burnt skin searching for the body to hold it tight, hold it. I stop, inches away from the closed person. Five inches. Four inches. Three inches. Two inches. One inch. Half. Quarter. Against. He lashes against my body, the sound of muffled wet screaming from him, my hot hand growing colder as he shakes violently. My tears fall into the tub of water, and suddenly they cease. His eyes meet me, eyes of blue, akin to mine. His eyes strike my heart and fear leaves me within a flash. I am overtaken by the ripe ink, and I press him harder into the tub. His scream, once more muffled beneath these waves. Suddenly, his body falls away, the water turns green, his feet, his legs, his torso, all, slowly creeping into damp soot. It coats my burnt hand with a delicate lick. He ceases. A snap of silence passes over the bathroom as I am left staring upon a wet muck. The womanly voice ceases within, fading out of my body and into the world. I take out a handful of the deep white ash that still lingers, my hand finally cooled by the great black dreg of the inked soul, and I swallow it whole.


	15. HAIR

# HAIR

The day, it is high, the sun, outstretched in an inching path, the forward time that permeates the blood of my skin. Pulled tight, the tanned leather cracks beneath the rays of a spinning knife, the farmer forgot to wet it. My arms, I cannot move, yet I wish to flee the physical entrapment, my arms, the tight skin, the tight, pulled aback pork of skin, the tightness. I despise this tight thing and the rife maggots that gnaw upon me. The small snoozed bites of dehydration, the soft razor cream, and the hot dripping froth of bog water that fills my vessels. I can’t seem to, I always. I always end before the beginning occurs, my life, always failed before it has begun. Always, the definite. Is there anything definite? Things always portrayed insatiably, the taste and odors of cat urine, the certain stench. The certainty of Lord, the certainty of crowned jewels and other things. Maybe the sand falls away when we do too, maybe when I take my leap it’ll come.

My hand bends into my shoulder, I leave it there, the sunlight falls onto my char black sheep skin, the warmth of the midday radiating into the crackle depths of my skin, bug drawn into the foreclosing illusion. Always, the always certain pathway of certainty. I seem to sit and stare, my mind wanders, my mind tracing itself over and over, the worn-out pencil of a certain pathway. A snip, yellow chair, yellow scissors, old and one, curled locks, golden eyes to match the golden hair. Snip, a lock locked away in a small little lockbox. Funny to play, the time then, a small child, afraid and alone, yet fear was not known. The name of it, the ceaseless name of it, fear, unknown, yet present. Left alone to play in the dirt and with grubs, my back brazen with sticks from the other schoolyard boys. A snip, yellow snip, yellow snip, golden lock to be locked away and fallen to the ground. The house had yellowed floors, once white with tones of brown, reduced to yellow, peeling floor vinyl coming undone, the walls falling in with warped watermarks, the smells of vats of burning plastic. The carpet molded into the shape of seated seeds, the buzzing nightmare screen, and yellow building blocks. A large tree loomed outside in the small house, the windows covered in aluminum, the false covering from the yellow sun. The green tree that cut across the tin walls, the scraping sounds with wind, the door was left open on windy days, to push through the dirt and stuck smells of times before. My room, the small nursēd home of rocking cribs, the bathroom, a cut snip, the first cut to be sniffed, a nude babe to be bathed in the sink.

I shift my head with my body, the light moves over my pale chest as I recline further into my seat, backward I slide, a splinter in my back, the cold warmth of a pinpricked prodded hole of blood forms. No worries and bothers, the small pus of pussy boots laden of ladled spirits and old worn cribs! Yea! Yes, of course, the mind of labyrinth dreams, snuff the candle of my womb and all shall exist without trifle! Oh, my mind, the aching phantom of **nonsense** , the words I speak, the insanity, the needless **nonsense** that drives no one to sanity, the fleeting ticks of pianos that click and run, the horrid sounds of shrill larks that bite away, my mind, a nothing. An enigma of unknown things, look inward and be at peace, nay! Look inward and one shall only find a thing of endless chaos, the mites that bite at wood, the world of endless terror, lost I am in it. Perhaps it is but better to be lost in the chaos of that maze then it is to have never entered the maze.

A long bowled ripe trim. Hardly a trim, a buzz and clipped hair to cover my eyes. A barbered, tailored, soul store of reflective chemicals. Children running and playing, eyes cast low, hidden and cast. A bass cast supposedly. Dear April, I sang, dear April, the lovely hands you take over to my heart, dear April, the silver snug chords you cut with golden scissors, the poorness shining underneath, dear April, I sung. Dear April, the blossom skies that breathe airy memories of cellos and touching arms, dear April, to you, the life of wormed soil, dear April, the light life of rainy aftermaths, dear April, you cut and you shaved, and how I fixated on you. Your hands and sweet chest, a motherly intent I had no more. Dear April, I sang to you. Dear April, how snug and soon you were to be, dear April, such a lovely tune.

My nude body grows restless, I shift in my seat, my hands pushing me upwards, no, left, no, not. I can’t. I stand from my chair, I pull the small spike of wood from my back, a lifting of my skin along with it. I look at it under the light, my head trailing it softly, my head, my hair falling over my eyes, I pull it back, my right hand holding the small blood covered shard. I look upon it, nothing but the inorganic organism that means nothing. Meaning nothing, nothing of the consequence, nothing of the reality. A man who has long hair is a woman of betrayal, ashamed to be, the Tarsus tarty partner sang.

I set the splinter by the windowsill, the hot white windowsill, the white paint, an even smell. My eyes do not meet the outside, my ears hear nothing. A quiet day, the middle of the day, within a middle day. I shuffle quietly to my bed, I sit. Restless, I stand. A rabbit rests restless, his eyes and ears tracing the twitching sounds of plucking chords. I stand, my legs, old, the pale lining of cartilage, the old bones of a young soul. My body hardly hollowed. I cannot tell upon my life, I walk to the door, my hand takes upon a glass. I drink the soft pooling foam, the fluttering drinking sounds explode into the room, the loud excursion of silence, the loud, deafening intoxication, the dripping drivel of spit falling upon my chin, the leaves and feathers falling in and out of my nose as I take the final taste. A small drop remains. Placed in the light, the glass reflects across the wall, the round circular expanses of the cup, the single glassy substance. Toss the wasted emptiness and let it be free, the muscled measles! Yes indeed! The labor of a man in a wild scape of sanity! Throw! It flies, stop, stare, see the tracing delight of the sounds of cut ties that fling it outward. Stop! It shines in fluttering dismay! Over the bed, over the books! Over the empty plane of beige carpet, over and over! It spins to see the disquiet! Yes, verily I speak! I speak! Look! The shard to flight, the crystalline fabricated surface explodes on the bare wall, the shard, the sparkling dust of a world, the chasm of time, the slow-moving pants of the ringing doorbell, the light basks in the energy of the world! The shards, the fluttering butterflies, the blue skies, the blue world, the hungry desire! Through and throughout, the thrills, and pains of life, the repetition, again! I rewind, reverse, retrace. The glass comes to my hand. The glass. Thrown! Look! It flies, the mystical, the trays, again! The light shining, the illumination of basking light, the single ray from the bowels below! Look, as the sounds of glass shatter about us all, look as the world splits into endless time! Look as everything traces the skies, look as we all walk forth into the shattered lives, again, and again. Look as the lives of all reduce to shards within blue dust. Look.

A buzzing silence. The clinking of blue glasses with blue liquid. The smell of shaving faces and scripted eyes. My hair, cut to shoulders, the free marooned running eyes. The seats, full, impatient I was. A small store, the workers only three, no black tiles, simply the white, two women, one man, the fat wasted breathing breath, the foul stench of eaten fish, the greasy hands, the slime, their eyes. The cutting noises, the cutting. She took to the trim of the hair that guided my eyes, the sweat, the permeating snub hands, the trifling cuts and twisted tides, the eyes that always glazed over, glazing.

The sun stands high, the glass, broken, no longer rewound, the sun, high. High flying eyes, it rises and rises, the pulling skin. A clock ticks forward, the cake stands tall. I’ve eaten too much, my stomach full, the rump, sick rump. Sick. Sun, right. Hot weather brings hot temperament, sweaty skin I have, the black cloth, the hidden curtains and hidden figures, the heat spiked cloth. Where does the winding mind go, this big band circus, the rhyming times? I sit in my chair. My body restless, I wish to stop.

A dark shadow eludes the beast, the eagle stretches its wings, perched high on the windy trees. A hot morning, everything in motion. The eagle darts its head, looking left to right, sat atop the far hill. The wind brings the dust below, everything invisible. The sounds of dancing cicadas fill the atmosphere, the dirt, the damp air, the thick gorged world that fills my thin lungs. A single bit of dust, the locked doors, the wooden structure, everyone is sick, we all are, the cough, the running cough, and torn lungs, mania, hysteria, shut us up in our wombs and let us see the dawn nevermore. The eagle takes to flight. Its crescendo of eyelines, the spanning great arms that shadows through the thick crust, the eagle, the great spanning beast that envelops us all, freedom, the call of misery, the flying sight to be beheld. The eagle soars, the sound of blades cut into me, I pray for it to land, land, and take me away, the flying sight, take me. Set me free from the binds of the worldly world, set the binds to dust. The great blue waves of soaring sounds, the infinity of the flowing world, a breeze to blow the great machine through the air, the great eagle, the love. How he dances through the tunes of sounds, the spinning circle he casts above, the red-eyed calamity that spots the running fowl. Let him run and reclaim his dignity and death, lo, the eagle screams downward, the great beast spinning and spinning. His feathers ablaze with great might, the soaring fire of soreness, the blue aqua of its skin, a crippling disease, let him bloat above the air, let him soar and catch his fowl.

No, no eagle. Something else. I must approach again. Different beast, different words. Something. I must do all again.

I sit forward in my chair, the black smock is whipped out, it cracks into the air, the conversations murmur below it. The smock is drawn upward and is wrapped around me, a button clicks quietly, a gritted paper is placed around my neck. She takes out her razor, a simple trim bout the face, I hear the bottle click open, the brush, about the bowl, back to front, the circle and quick speed. About my face in and out, the vent turns on above my face, the blowing air chills my eyes, they water. She begins. The right side, a single cut, one, the blade rips my skin, I wince. The quiet sound of discontent, she panics, the running ooze of thin blood, the thin water that fills my face, out and out, she panics in her silence, the breathless mutters of apologies that fly outward, the murmur hides beneath it. I stand and wipe my face, a drip of cool crème fills my tongue, a taste. I wipe it all off with the thick smock about my neck, the button clicked, undone. I throw it to the ground. The bell of the door clings, a cloud covers the late orange sun, the rose budded bush eaten of its petals, yet the murmur still drones.

My hair fills my eyes as I sit, stewing in my pork ladled soup. I move downward, the hair, it covers my eyes, the thick patterns that hold the locked gloom, I stand, my hair covers my eyes, I always believe myself to be a calm person, finding that the motions of sandy seas always wash away my, my hair covers my eyes, desires, and hatred, that if I truly want peace, I can have it, I am not quick unto, my hair covers my eyes, anger, that my soul is but a calm leaf within the hidden rays, my hair covers my eyes, of a fantasy sun, that I am but the nest of a bluebird flown home, the quiet twigs in the fog, my hair covers my eyes, that I can take unto pleasantries, my hair covers my eyes, that I can see the world beyond simplicity, my hair covers my eyes. The sound of everything that takes me away, the pulsing sound. What is it? The blood in my veins ramp upward through my forehead, the pounding dilemma. I move across the room, my hair covers my eyes, I stop for a moment, my hair covers my eyes, I look through the window to watch a small cat cross the road, my hair covers my eyes, I lean in, my hair covers my eyes, I move back, my hair covers my eyes, I do nothing, my hair covers my eyes, I move it out of my eyes, my hair covers my eyes. A great calling curdles my veins, my hair covers my eyes, the world disintegrates as the glass flies, my hair covers my eyes, I, my hair covers my eyes, wish, my hair covers my eyes, to, my hair covers my eyes, be, my hair covers my eyes, reborn, my hair covers my eyes, again, my hair covers my eyes.

The buzzards fly over the bare naked crib, the world unfolds itself over me, the razor, the clean razor stained with the deep black soaking rippled ideals of my blood, be reborn and transfer to spirithood, take me over to the plane of our dreams, take me great Lord, take and transfer the soul of me, the child to you, my mother, take me and set me free, the needles, the needles, please pinprick me open as I sit in my fear of blood. Quiet, the quiet. Breathe on me softly the sun does, wander about the great homelands of mine, me, the pilgrim, empty hollow, the soul about the planes of eight. Dear skies, I see it now, my hands trace my hair, the held back sweat that forms, the bubbling burst, the endless desire. The endless stream of life that darts me forward, the speeding trials of the hanging man; we are condemned. I see the fortitude of our yesterday, I see the decadence of our morrow, yet I am condemned along with you, in the blazing car crash of our life, the one thrown aside by the yellowed marbled prophet, the bubbling skin that sticks to the windows, Satan strikes us down. For your punishment is far less in gruesomeness than this life could ever be. I take to my feet, the wandering slime eels, they drag across the floor, I am screaming with the tears that fall from my eyes, the mouth I have, I choose not to speak, my running tears, the endless time. Mother hold me tight against your bosom, my soul is aghast outward. The sunlight dance, its fine dress, blazed in the deep green solitude of the distant forest and the select chirps of the red wooded tree lickers, the beetles that climb through the thick ladder of clouds, the soil that pulls me yonder, the baking heat, the world knocks me over, set me free O God, take me over to the time of hidden lands, take me above the plane of the great Alps, the Alps, the high fairing calmness. Yet, here I am. Falling downward. Tumbling sounds of snow and cracking skin that meets the world, my loose meat. The trees that stand in their abhorred silence, the path of flowing time, I am breathing no longer, the sounds of the white sun in the white snow beneath the white bones within the white skin, you bury me, bury me deep as my body permeates with the thick blood of restless death.

Stop and pause. The razor, it cannot cut now, for your hair is too long. The lights switch on, the flicker shines through. A crack, small and indistinct shines through the mirror, I see my face, the sunken eyes, the blue bright bulbs, the deep drown hair, my nose, wide on the bridge, narrow at the point. The tile is old, the scent of urine is rife.

I take my hands and fan them through my hair, my pale fingers, the pale long slender bastards that move through me. I seem to repeat myself, don’t I? This endlessness, the endless trifle of my mind, I seem to roam, yes, roam. The distant humming circus. A car squeals outside, the sounds of rubber pouring itself against the hard ground. I jump at the noise. A simple stir, the loud shrill. I am cold in here. Very cold. A chilly wind wafts over my body, it lingers. It sticks to me like paste, a thick fine paste that sticks on top of me. I am sweating, yet. And yet I sweat over the sour notes that sound in my ears, the ringing noises, the ringing noises that shroud me tirelessly. I can no longer hear silence; the noise always impedes me. Perhaps I imagine the silence? Perhaps my mind takes the ringing and ushers it aside, and casts forth the illuminated sounds of silence, a vague remembrance?

My life seems to unfold over and over again, a white linen cloth blown through the wind, the sounds of pearly gates scrapping against the thin concrete floor, a gust of wind ripping at the young tree, the tall blazing sun shining on the thirsty plant. My hair, the sleek oil sheet that adorns me. A crown of sleek nonsense. I feel akin to nothing within these moments, when my tears stream downward and etch my face inward, when the canyons are carved amongst my cheeks, and my eyes boil over, a sea boiled away by the burning terror of humanity.

I open the white drawer, the paint is melted together, the sound of the paint unsticks itself as the old tracks squeak. A pulling noise, a thick rip, and a thin grate. The inside of the drawer is old, the smell of old glue and wet wood. Dust coats my hand as I let go of the handle, a speck of thick dust, my right hand, covered. Wasted away, the dark shadow of my body casts itself over the contents of the drawer. Poetic dribble. Yea.

A single electric razor is positioned in the drawer. My mouth goes dry. A painful taste of dead skin piles upon my plaque filled teeth. My tongue, the dry worm lashing about, the rough texture coated in thick yellow filth. My hands full of the cold taste of a shiver, my hands coated in the clammy scents of rotten vegetables, my hair, falling over my eyes, I woke up now, my eyes, my peeling eyes, the thick crust cracks as they flutter open, my hands form a thick fist, the sweat permeating over everything. My shoulders backlash as the world comes into focus. My psyche thrusts into the black sepsis of the soul. My mind wanders from reality to the unreal, over and open, my mind wanders back and forward, the running world, the room spirals around, the long vortex tears me to the ceiling. My nose, full of the thick glob, the infectious disease, yellowed toes and thick nails that fill my stomach. Everything falls forward as I starve in my sedimentary position, my mind. Where? The needless description of the needless position. My muscles tighten as I stand, longer and longer, my soul slipping away.

My hand touches the razor, the sharp buzz already fills my mind, the blank spots of noise, created by my cortex. I lift it with my left hand, and I place it on the sink. It sits. My hair, the hair, the sweat-filled wrench. I feel hot. My mouth fills with paste as I turn to the toilet. My stomach wrenched. The tightening knot spills blood over the bowl. The thick coughs that snap the bones of my insides. I wipe the inside of my mouth with my hands, every crevice, I pull out a long cord, a white cord in black lines, the thick buzz gets louder, the cord comes further as I tug and tug out of my mouth, it turns red, the cord becomes rope, the thick rope fills my throat, unable to breathe I panic and pull faster, my throat closing, I pull and pull and pull and pull, my throat burned by the dry, long rope. I open my eyes. I am curled by the side of the toilet, my mouth tastes like vomit, my head is full of fluid. My nose is full of fluid as well, a thick pressure fills it, I can hardly breathe.

I stand from the fetal position. My mind almost fades to dark again, my hands are curled against themselves, my arms pressed into my chest. I am bent down, looking over the toilet, my hair falls in my face. I release the fluid, my voice trills in agony as I let forward a great black crashing sound sent from the heavens. My fist meets the thick tile, the cracked glass cuts my hand, yet I do not relinquish my assault, my black shriek, the thick guttural horror, it echoes through the room, the reverberations, the repetitive, _the_. The. It rings. Back and forward the sound of tin ripens as my ears begin to bleed. I do not relinquish.

My body stands before the mirror, my hips protruding outward, my ribs, the thick demise, my cheeks sunken, the thin pale skin, a glass reflection in the mirror. They plump outward before my eyes, the swelling skin, turned red, the bubbling muscles and tight fat, my neck struggles from the rope. My body is overtaken, my hand guided by nothing. It reaches for the electric razor as one reaches for the blue bible of Will. It takes it. The firm grasp about the ridges of steel. The cord is plugged into the wall, a flick comes on, the lights dim. It holds the razor and the razor trembles in it. It guides it upward, over and over, my vomit-soaked mouth aghast in horror as it pulls upward, the endless tiding of life reaching for the sweat rag atop my head. It buzzes over, the ripping plucks of my hair. My punishment for my sins, Christ did perish for me, I must repent with rips and whips. I must find my doom on this earth. I idle over and over; my hands touch nothing but the filth of _us_. My hair falls, my tears stop in the stifling harmony of the hair, my eyes reduced to the thick white pearls of reddening cracks. Over, under, over, side, side, the thick falling hair that touches my bare bleeding feet. Is this happening?

My body. The shell, the former light, the coated fur, the holder of the black mist. My body aches in the tired shape of the world about me.

My hair, the falling twigs that touch the ground, it goes, the hand goes over and over, the thick blonde stubble forms beneath the brown. Half went; it goes. The smooth finished exterior of the razor burns the hand for a moment. My eyes cannot open themselves much longer. Then, my breath grows heavy, the quick passing sounds go quicker as my heart goes slower. All is gone before the sunlit mirror.

A cloud passes over the bright sun, the delicate dancing sun that shines its rays of heat over the grassy fields. The thick white puffs swirl upward, a tint of green is reflected above as the pale blue skies spiral about themselves in motionless words. A poem breathes itself to life from the tips of the waving grass, the sounds of syllables radiate over the sweet scents of damp soil. A worm breaks from the ground, the sounds of the lambskin drums hum softly beneath her poem, the bright fire stretches to the sun, their fingers entwine for a mere moment. A bird circles high, through and over the thick grass it passes by, its eyes dart about the sky. It sees the motion of a shaken bit of grass, one bit that moves against the path of the wind. It dives, the quick shrill screech of its silence cuts through the drums, the brown feathers hold tight as the eyes open further. The bird disappears within the brush, the soft brown being hides beneath the grassy swirling ocean that expands forever onward. The grass ceases, the waves halt. A silent snap is the only noise heard, but now with it too, are the sounds of circular motion, the sounds of glass rooms lit by the light in the open air. The noise then fades back into nothing, the drums and fire come back to beyond, beneath the cool soil, and so, the poem resumes, the wind carries on, and the ocean comes once more to lap at its golden shores


	16. ZERO

# ZERO

My sleep was restless last night, my body turning adrift in that blue oceanic void. I sat awake in my bed, staring through the window, watching her blue curtain dance through the wind. My hand kept me awake, my great aching hand, the thing coated in ash and pus, it creaks with movement, the skin cracking with a single gesture.

I sit up from my chair now, my back slowly peeling off. I lean forward to meet the sun, a bright yellow sun coming up through the great fields, bestowing its light through the trees. A morning sun, the dew falling into vapor. I close my eyes and breathe; my legs begin to shake. Her door opens, her father steps out, a cup of something, steaming, his eyes black and bright, gleaming with joy. He smiles. A faint fuzz radiates. It is time.

I stand, my legs are sore, sat, and squared in that chair. Sore skin, the bedpan. Bedpan, funny word. The bathroom is dank, a dripping noise lingers. I flick on the light. Bed, resting, maybe they are bedridden with illness? Or just lazy? I look at my hand, it is bleeding from between the cracks. I run it under cold water, it stings, I whimper slightly as my sight reduces to a spinning tunnel. My eyes fuss further as the water rushes past my hand, down that scuffed swirling vortex. My, my, me. The word, that word, a curse of ego, a song to sing for nothing. I bandage my hand, wrapping, wrapping, it hurts, I apply the topical cream before covering fully. I, another horrible ode, another song to sing for nothing, my box seems to fall. My body is shaking as I think of my pain, my great trembling, aching, nothingness. Her bliss, soon today, a bit nervous. The water laps at the white shore, two men, affixed by the frozen lake, frozen while lapping. Stuck, skin of false color, stuck, eyes of false color, stuck, grey peeling age. A testament to their loss, they fall between the hills and valleys, wandering unto death, doomed to stare at the frozen lake, a poorly painted lake.

Pan, a pan, a dish to hold? Who thought of that? Maybe the steel rings out with different volumes? Ting before, blunt tap after.

I am rife, the ripe falling fruit. I took a walk, walk, where? No, I’m in my house, breathe, your mind is excited.

-So, if we look at number five, we can see that the answer is projection, _not_ habituation.

The mildew from the carpet causes my head to ache softly, the blue mildewed carpet. I cross my arms, slouch down, slid down. My feet feel heavy in my boots, the big heavy stones tied to me. I glance around the room, full of tedium, full. My eyes look outside, rain is, no, lighter than rain, a faint mist is falling over the ground, dampened concrete, grey and black. All empty, the classrooms line the concrete, the single file concentration. Teal roofs jut through the sky. The mountain watches over the concrete and rooms and teal roofs. It watches. That great beast, the terror shrouded by the thick black wind, the noises of birds disguised by the hands of leaves. I wander back inside, my eyes, they, they, my eyes, they wander.

-Well, if we were to truly understand our current state in time one could clearly see that…

Nothing, no use, the words, a drone. I must sound conceited. A boy snores behind me, his mouth ajar, I turn to face him, saliva dripping, drip, dribble over chin. If only I were that rude. Rude to be the sleeping man, mother would never allow it. Mother, I need to get groceries on the way home. Chicken, the grain, bread. Something else. It’ll come. Splendor of light fills my heart. Why? Suddenly I feel such a radiance, who is it? A great being of energy, the blue flamed hands uplift my soul, my body floating. My mind above the fuzzy clouds and shrouds of people. Quickly, I fall. What was that? A whisper fills my head, two whispers. I swallow. Whisper unto whisper. We all stand from our seats, we leave. We enter, a smell of butter, the blue carpet, he spilled. We leave, the bell. A buzz. Buzz. Whisper fills me. We enter. The time is running through, blood fills my bruised knuckles as I, we enter, we leave. A pink blossom, her hand, it touches my back. I am standing outside, the filling sounds of grey skies pound my skin, my mind running over itself, the screaming, the whisper, her hand on my back. I almost fall, my legs full of blubber. She calls me. The cherry petal, her gentle pink fingers, they don me, her lips, parted and pursed, my name slipping out. Which one? Who touched me? Two hands, one pink, another white, the pale finger that raises me, the new, the old, no, I love her, I must love her. I think, she cares? Whisper says otherwise. Where does this go?

I open my eyes. A smell. A taste. My room, the black room, no more whisper, no more hands. Right, breathe, that wasn’t real. What is? The falling illusion of man guides us to realities that do not exist. Yet the soul still trembles, the scientific nihilist, unaware, the soul trembles within him. Lost his soul, all lost, we. It was taken perhaps, the free beast ripping it from us, the looming blue eyes that stare, the black eyes, the black heart, ripped from us. A cog within a cage. Where does this go? This illusion, this allusion? Ting before, blunt tap after.

I clench my fist, the white padding tightens, no more pain, my teeth throbbing with such majesty. My teeth. I open the brown drawer, it slides open, a squeal for a moment, the hiss. I put on my pants, my black pants. The running thoughts, the thick wide baby, soft, stop. Pants, black. I hold them up while I pull out my white shirt from the drawer, pants, too large, fall right off. I taste something, blood. No. I sit on the bed, my hand carefully falling through the open sleeve, bottom tucked in, right, and pull. Daily letter, check the street before. What time today, I do no recall, I’ll go when I see the cars all linger around, the sounds of talk and smells of smoke. Smell, inhale, deep breath, I fall backward, throbbing over my bed. My body, the hawking temperament. The shaking temperament. A smell of burning plastic, a smell of burning smog, my plastic? No, I don’t smoke that. No. I don’t, read today? Nap before, maybe today, paint the image, today. The classes, no, not in a class, five years past.

My thoughts unwind, the opening gate, a bright array of black particles, the blue lashes cut, I need to tie a new lash. Fashion on first to bring them all in. Red this time, red, the deep crimson stone of red ruby. I shake the pill bottle, my eye held up to the side, the red ruby, the jumping red bean. One of day, two, three, four for me. Above I go, but such shall the man with great wings, there, he shall surely flow.

Close your eyes and fade, the redden beast taken over and swallowed, take away, falling time, let you fetter unto your dreams, see it:

The sounds of the sea set me awake. Call me, call. The sand touches my legs, dried sand, all over. I run my red, thin fingers through my coarse beard, the matting web, of spiders, of wire. I lick my lips, dirt all over my teeth. I scrape it off. Flung muck.

I look up to the sky, a great spinning blue is around, a great pale blue, interwoven with its spikes of white and soft bushels. But there, the distance, my eyes fixate over it, a great looming discordant wave. The black and green height. The distance, off. There. The wind stops, the gentle tattering, halted. The shore is bare, the water gone. I realize. My heart, it trembles, it races, the uplifting calm, the great wall writhing in the distance, the shore, receded. I run through the sand, my bare feet cutting through the seashore silence. The pattering noise of crunchy grain as I run, my breath begins to fill, my wrinkled bones and tan skin are tight, my muscles working, yet I feel no fatigue. I keep running, never halting through the pain. I run. My feet meet the black soil of the jungle, tall trees spanning around my sides, I pay no attention and all reduces to a mere blur. Run, I run. Run, I run. My eyes fixate upon the deep black height, the brown path winding up the distant mountain, I cut my foot on a small stone, yet, I run, running, my skin, my heart flung to the height of terror. The sound of drums reverberates in my ears as I attempt to reach the sky. The water begins to make its song, a great and deep noise of brass might. Rising, the distance, it swells. My feet meet the stones that line the mountain, I run and run, I do not look back, a great spiral of clouds overfills the sky, water lashing my face, I pull, my grey eyes flat against the dark skies. The lashing eyes and waves bellow. I feel it, now, the great shrill sounds of Satan filling my heart, my muscles never pausing. I smile and scramble upward, rocks cluttering about my barren feet. My clothes are torn as I trip, my face slamming against the newly wet ground. The wave grows louder, building a tower of noise around me. I run to the top, I must make it, the top, to be free of the great wave, how it crashes, my head concealed beneath these shadows. The cloud thrusts white eyes from the winding depths of its great black face above, great jagged eyes, attempting to split the heavens in twain. Then, its mouth permeates forth, wide and far, its blood-stained teeth shone to the world, bellowing its great shriek of terror. God descends through the calm. All stops, the clouds halt, the wave murmurs beneath the silence. Coming, I still run. My legs cramp and tear open, my hands and feet set ablaze as my calves pulse. Rocks begin to fall as I shamble upward. A gentle lamb freshly born to a newly crumbling cliff. Silence. Trumpets. The ring. The loud brass waves, the shrill noises that sound, the coming of retribution. Higher, I must climb. Higher. Beneath me the fog fills the trees, I look behind. Fog? No, no fog, to my dismay the trees are crushed as the great wave fills the world, its deep sound overtook, it pours, the green wave full of white tops crashes down upon the island. The wrath of God spewing forth from the bowels of heaven, a great amalgamation of divine terror, made of white eyes ablaze in golden spears with rods of blood comes soaring out, purifying the blackish white wings that beat against the air. The heavens begin to sing dogma of the mightiest stone sepulcher. Yonder! They fall! Before either comes to the great wave, they thunder! The angels meeting angels, they all fall in the vortex of the black cloud. Their spears are thrown, the wave still sings its terror upon me, faces push from the water. The white sandy shore is gone, erased by the grey and black faces. The cloud is blown away by the pearly cheek of the heavens, in it is a thing of beauty, its breast in twain by the long spear of God’s hand, his beauty melting to the doom of ice, his beauty facing the horns and blood, his beauty blown away as the cloud was. His back parts and there rips forward black wings of stunted size, there comes icy tears of hidden hellfire, there comes the angels who stood behind him, against Him, there they come too, cast away as branch never meant for fruit.

My mustache grows longer as I climb, overcoming my lip, yet I climb, my mind falls through the ground, a great void seizes me in terror, I run. My thighs now full of this great stinging venom of fright, I climb, the higher reaching world taking me over. There, alas, I climb, I fall, the rocks give way, the black unturned stones now seen by the base of my feet, the choir of angels in my ears, my hand, laden with burns, rest outstretched, calling to the peace of the mountain, the tip that would never be washed. Alas, my aged bod, the snapped bowstring, pulled loose, the whispers taking me, alas, bile spilling from the mouths of the demons about me fills my heart, alas, my hand rests, the tip of light brazing its decrepit skin, alas, my heart reaching for the peak of the world beyond our own, alas, I am washed away by the deep, repugnant waters of pale faces, alas, my soul is lost amongst the deep sea, alas, my eyes fade unto the sight of nothingness.

White ripe fruit, stained red, the little wrapped fruit in candy skin, it stares, open and riddled with tears, it soaked up salted seas. I breathe in my room. The silence of my room, a deep breath is drawn, the soaking of the aether, I take deep drinks of it. My tears stop and I sit up slowly, allowing my head to acclimate. My legs are listless, the strange loose things, the distant loose things. Loose. Affixed by the depths of strings and piano wrung wire. Strung along by great finitude we live and perish, so our finitude becomes infinitude. Perhaps science can one day lead us, no, cannot, lead, the leading plow against the mud. Mud, rotten mud, digging the plow deeper. Nothing. I stand. My body sways forward in a light motion, my shoes creaking. I inhale, my eyes closed. Silence. Sounds in my mind swirl as I absorb the drifting peace. A bird, a chirped bird, the chittering noises of cars and voices. I muse of nothing, my words, the pseudo blabbery of waste. My eyes close. My eyes, open. My eyes close, then they close, then they close. A tall sunflower stands before me, its stalk wide and green, the bright pale green, coated in worms and bugs, it writhes in height. Swaying through the calm wind that lashes above, the yellow petals fill me with joy. I climb the flower, going higher and higher, I see the flower, the tip, the top. I reach the brown pad. The yellow petals turn blue, giving way to sky, the brown footing reduced to dirt tilled lands. I close my eyes. A tall sunflower stands before me, its stalk wide and green, the bright pale green, coated in worms and bugs, it writhes in height. Swaying through the calm wind that lashes above, the yellow petals fill me with joy. I climb the flower, going higher and higher, I see the flower, the tip, the top. I reach the brown pad. The yellow petals turn blue, giving way to sky, the brown footing reduced to dirt tilled lands. I close my eyes. No, no, twice, in twain, not again, not gain, no flower. No flower. I can no longer shake my head. I can no longer shake it to cast off this film of dirt over my eyes. No longer can these images of white magnolia blossoms and sweet brown fences keep me satisfied. No longer. I must step through, I must, it must, I must step through my abode of caves, and I must see the sunlight.

I shift from my standing slumber and I am before the door. Outside, it rings. The voices and rumbling motors call me. A box of cookies is held beneath my right arm. Where? I focus my eyes intently on the box, tracing my mind and the twisting depths of my forgotten being. Such superfluousness, all I did, all that happened, I simply, I merely, thought. No memories, no matter how hard I tried, none were able to be conjured awake. Instead, the fear of the door took hold of my mind. The fear takes hold. The scent of brazed red meat comes through the base of my door, the white gas clouding me, luring me out, a cartoon, boyish thought, and prim fantasies from the boyish man. A bore. A bother. I close my eyes, I close, my face peeling shut, my hands peeling open, a mask carved of thin brimstone, adorned over and on, I must cast the depths of strength. I must cast the blue transposed fields away from my heart, I must take hold of what is offered before me, I must be strong. I feel the strength of a thousand sorrows take hold of me. I reach for the door and I open it. With great terror, I step into the real world.

I ring the doorbell, the loud ringing, loud, the sweet gentle songs. I recognize Beethoven, ninth symphony. I hum along in silence. The noise of voices is muffled behind the thick white door. A glass pane clouds their bodies. A woman opens the door. She smiles, her face suddenly shifting into a strange emotion as she sees me.

“Oh hi, hello, you must be the neighbor across the road, yeah, well come on in!” She looks down, her eyes meet the cookies in my arms. “Well, I see you got Rob’s message, you remember Rob right, he’s right there next to you?” She takes the cookies from my hand; her red nails contrast intensely with the white tiles beneath our feet. She pulls away, as she does, she sees my hand. “Dear, what happened to your hand there?” I shift my hand behind my back. She asks my name. Her voice, she asks, my name. Her sweet lips open wide with the letter A in name. A, in name. Her cracked aged lips, a sweet relic of youth. Her daughter carries such sweet prizes, her mother’s bosom, her mother’s hands, her mother’s sweet lips, her father’s deep blue eyes. Beauty of pale flowers and pink petals. Flower. The cliché of the femme. The bright thorn, the deep-rooted thorn to draw such copious wells of blood. Spring forth. I answer, silence, my mouth muffled. I answer. She nods, silence, eyes widening in her hints of confusion. She departs as I stand there. Eyes bend to form the many people who line this home. The many faces, the many details. The wide, the scrawny, the deep eyes, the hollow eyes, the bright ones. The pill infused hands, the abstained souls. Distracted, distracted. I scan through the people, the sweet face, looking, deep learning. I do not see her face as I pass through.

I walk around, following the frayed hallways and clear white walls. Photos of the white family are scattered through the house, hanging by silent black tacks, dug into the walls. Two, five, ten, eight. Here and there, I stop to admire her figure, I see her close details, the beautiful prim edges of her soft details. _Details_. I find myself in a room, on the first floor, third door on the right. A small room, a single desk. Barren walls, painted loosely, the new coats, spreads, and squares, not fully selected. A pile of wood sits by the door, the roof hangs hollow, the smell of the house takes abode in my nose as air wafts through the hole. I gag. The dripping lewd scent of mold fills me with disgust. But more than that, more than this physical spell of grave disgust, my soul turns inside me, to have the painted walls shone and prim, clean and pure, only for the underside, the inside, to be riddled with such atrocities. My hands wrap into fists, the sound of my dried left-hand cracks in the silence, my disgust, now turned anger. A thought, an instance, it seizes me. I am but the horror, the face of fake ink. I leave the room. The smell of roses fills my nose, and my brain discards all that I had held onto in the room behind me. 

I turn the corner, following the hallway back to the main room. When suddenly, a great shock of euphoria is cast over me. The bones in my body give way to ash thrown in the sunlight. I see her, descending from the stairs, her soft green skirt twisting about her legs, the bright white blouse, flowing with ruffled edges, dancing as she descends. Her eyes go about the room, a great ringed angel. A great terror to many yes, but unto the few, a great beauty of many powers. I stand in the hallway, locked, my eyes, I must avert them from her wonder, yet I am stuck here. My loneliness melts away as I am face to face with my love. My love, yes, you love me, why all else shall you grant me this glance? Why shall you grant me the presence of you if you did not love me so? Why all else? Why? I shudder with my joy, my body removed of skin, my fiery soul drugged then, now, no longer. A great pale match struck against the cheek of an angel, a light warmer than any earthly thing. Her, my love, how I do not know your name, nor anything of you, I love you wholly, and you love me. Her lips go tight with her candlewick smile. She touches the floor from the winding white stairs, walking outside, to the backyard.

Now, my moment, I must seize her and profess everything to her, she must know my love, she must know, and she must feel it, I know she will. All my hours, watching and seeing, all my hours of feeling and thinking, she must love me. I walk slowly out of the shade of the hallway, my feet silently tapping along the white-tiled floor. People move away from me, their backs still turned. The sun refracts through the sliding glass door, it warms me kindly as I linger. My eyes scan outside. The beautiful sights fill me with awe.

The clouds have melted away, fallen many hours ago, now before me, I see the great spiral of life, a bright void of milky blue, spanning for eternity. But below, in front of me, before me is a great garden, carved of steppes and wooden benches, white rocks lining a flowing pond, a twisting tree of yellow blossoms dancing gaily between the music of the wind. Fish bob upward through the water, tasting the flies, flies, eaten, gone, the waste, gone, expelled. Purple flowers fill the gaps between the stone walkways, crumbled and fallen, and in their state, beauty arises as they are trampled by a force they cannot even comprehend. Tragic fate of green and purple, the entwined colors, the foot, the sole, crushing, and snapping the pristine beauty, the elegance of these flowers, a force, unknown. A sensation of a tap, I move, I have been standing in the doorway. I step forward onto the soft gravel beneath my feet. I hover for a moment beside the calm green water, the trickling noises of the gentle stream muted by the hands and blabber of the people about me.

There, my eyes, her beauty of shining stones, upward, her. I stand from beside the stream, I meet her eyes. She sees me, the great black void of love shining upon me, she turns away and walks off quickly. Her feet stepping through the stones, fleeing, ah yes, the embarrassment of love, do not fret. I am here, her soft voice over me soon, her hands and legs coiled around my heart, her beauty. I must not allow the others to see our love unwinding about their sphere, it is sacred, the soft beauty of life, the soft words of something beyond, the danger, the glee.

I stand, staring as she walks, her legs tightening, the muscles, going, lovely. She turns the corner of the house, behind all sight, waiting for me, waiting. A great stone flutters downward, the angst of what is going to happen, the angst of change and choice, her beauty, mine, so soon mine. A great pool of milk, rippling in stillness, right upon the edge of my fingertips, right upon the edge of my dried tongue. Waiting, yes, despite my great urge to expand outward and feel her great joy, I wait to let her love ruminate, to let her tear further over my bod, to let her want more and more as her soul seemingly festers in her loneliness.

My heart stirs, stirring great blood of blue tumult, guide me, my legs abound through the gravel, my sights brighten unto a firm tunnel, the edge of the house, her turning as I turn, I see it, oh yes, flashes before, our tongues lashing, the great works of poetry, supreme to all other works of life ever before see, supreme to all. Her eyes and hands holding me as I give way to her, the corner, about the corner and it shall be mine. I move through noises of people, growing mute now, the stream flowing faster in my ears, a whisper of vague power in me, a hand of pale supremacy guiding me. One moment and it shall be mine, beyond the corner of life, beyond it all, everything shall give way, the rose shall open and my tongue shall taste the nectar. Yes, the soft clouds of heaven about my skin as I rise to greet her, about the corner, about the corner, one moment. I approach. A voice:

“Why would you invite him? Or did dad?”

“Well sweetie he _is_ our neighbor, plus, he is a recluse of sorts, we just tried to help!”

“Mom, I told you. I, I saw him watching me.”

“Well it was probably just a coincidence; it doesn’t mean anything dear.” The mother reaches her hand out. The soft hand, twain alike, the beauty of her hand, the daughter, my love, my arriving being of beauty. Wait, shush, let her ruminate, then I shall cast and pull.

“No mom! It wasn’t, I-.” She sighs, cutting herself off. he hesitation, the anxiety surmounting, her love, a sweet love, ready to burst, a sweetly candied boil! Hark! “I saw him more than once. He creeps me out, I’ve, you know, I saw him looking at me through his curtain the other day, he, he does it a lot mom, I don’t want him here,” her lips let loose with a hushed proclamation of anger.

“Well why would he watch you dear! You’re just imagining things again!” The mother moves forward, attempting to sidestep her, but she strikes! the hand! Gripping her mother’s arm, the furl of the cloth, the bending anger and love, the confession, yes, my friends, surmising upon this moment, the grand reach of orgasm! Wait! Listen!

“Mom! I saw him looking! I am not crazy! He saw me when I was changing! He knows when I do, I had to go change in the bathroom for the past two days! He is a freak mom and I want him fucking gone! I’ve seen his eyes, they are everywhere-.” she moves her hands to her eyes, wiping the single gumdrop tear- “I close my eyes and I see him staring. I am not comfortable in my own home anymore, please, mom just make him fucking leave!” My love, rise, your fire, you…you…

“Is that what you want me to do?! You want me to drag this guest out of our home and make a scene! Why don’t you think straight for once!?” The mother leaned into her daughter’s face, whispering in anger. “Well tell me! What do you want to happen to him?! What will satisfy little miss ego?!”

“I don’t know mom! You want me to tell you?! I just want him gone! Out of our house, out of his house! Out of life even, I wish and I hope and, and that, I, that I will wake up and his house will be gone, that it was just a fucking dream! I wish he would die, or just not exist to begin with! I want him to die, to fall out of this place and just fucking die! He is scary mom, he is scum, he frightens me! His eyes and hands, I see him staring! His pale face! Mom please, I just want, I want him to die, I want it. That’s what I want I want. Please mom, please, make him go away. I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

Sounds of footsteps louden, crunching above the rocks. Soft sobs, running…waves, sorrow, something. I walk out of the garden, to the glass door, through the glass door, through the kitchen, through the living room, to the door, out the door. I stand on the steps; fiery tears begin to fill my eyes. I hesitate on the, the, stoop. That is the word. She, lied. It must be. It, I love her, she. She must, no her scorn, no she has been poisoned by the well of her life, she loves me still, her façade is fooling her, after all I have done, she must love me. My stomach spirals as my feet glide through the black asphalt. My eyes twitch, swelling, puffing. I clench my fists as my throat fills with bile. My wrapping pops, and my hand bleeds, the soft drops of crimson words and black ink pours from my hand, dripping quietly as I stagger away. My legs tighten with air, deflating, my mind wandering through the clouded landscape of a deep abyss, black fog spilling over my heart, betrayed by the false words of my love. I open the mailbox. My angels from below begin to sing, their sweet cracked trumpets guiding me downward. One white envelope, smiling faces, advertisement. I approach my door, the skin, my skin, burning beneath the sun as the echoes of the world expand, I fall away, falling, and falling, falling away, falling, as I reach out, my skin grows cold. Great ash covers me as the soft harmony of musical despair takes me. I stand at the edge, looking over, then behind, a white sun falling over the hills. A great black crag beneath my toes, a great swarm of insects gnawing in silence, a looming hymn of voices, falling. I fall, tumbling through the noise of soft emptiness, my heart turning inside out, a great light extinguished, falling, I fall, through the great hole of silent melodies, falling, I fall, plummeting endlessly downward through the never-ending abyss of crashing black waves.


	17. BÁS

# BÁS

I open the door. Mystical awakenings arouse me gently. Eyes and skin peel away to reveal the innards. Eat the skin that rots and grow for a day. Eet and eet, freed da innards of ya. Restrain. Restrain.

My eyes, peel, open, peel, again, each day, peel. MOVE YOU SICK FUCKING BASTARD, YOU MONSTER, AWAKE FROM YOUR NIGHTMARE. YOU ARE FILTH, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING. YOU MOVE TO DO NOTHING. YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU. YOU SHOULD’VE DIED INSTEAD.

My mind, the ceaseless spinning dragon that eats itself forward and backward. My house stands on the dirt, rising upward the great white tin expands, the windows creak as the wood grows longer nnnnnd long, on, up and above the maggots come spilling out of the mouths in the eyes of the windows. They repetitive skin holes rip and tear. Momma the great tied chain wraps around my neck, chained and shackled the house grows upward, growing, a thousand miles above the dirtied floor the Earth gets smaller as I live up here. Chained to my chain the house still screams it shallow tears. My eyes intervene in their closing, vanished, the house disappears, the quiet disappearance of the house. It falls away, the falling eyes. Eyes. Eyes, a cigarette is pressed into my skin, it boils, she laughs, my teeth fall out, bloodied ears.

I fall through my door; my hands slip over the greased knob. Static fills my mind as the screaming doom fills my stomach. Screaming, indeed. Before me I fall through the floor, the great spiral, spiral, spiral, spiral, spiral, spiral, spiral, spiral, it goes. My eyes, my eyes that is all I see as I take to the door, the driving wedge slams against my head as the pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, feelings of waves pass over me. A vision takes hold of me, a great blacklight strikes me from my feet and I collapse once more, my eyes meet nothing but a great capsule, the soft sounds of fluid passing in front of me. The clear skin of the fetus, entwined with birds that peck and the skin, it rustles in its momentary rest the bushing baby that curls inside. Its blood flows green as the opening unfolds about me, the smell of rotting fish takes hold, I vomit look up again. The great mass of life rips my mouth open, the pouring sand, the pouring evil. The great defiler of tongues and eyes fly in front of me, a great mass, writhing in shrieks, a great mass of thick mist fills my lungs as it comes closer to me. A flash of blacklight shines over my eyes as I pass away from its sights. I feel it. I feel it. It chases, the rats that crawl over my sin, the soft get and sharp teeth that round over me, from y calf, upward raising, raising, my thighs, the thick plump animals crawl over me the, pitter of their teeth, my skin a wrapping. They rip me open the great thousand paper cuts, the squeal in their triumph, the rats fill me, they crawl over my face, I succumb to the floor as they take me down over the barren cold. Blink. Silence, please hold me.

My bedroom is coated in the film of white. No, I know I want to leave, I pound on the door, silence. No noise, the buzzing agony that overtakes me as the light shines through my window. He sees. He sees. The great light sees me as the scrapping sound ensues over me. Take me, my soul pounds, the door does not shriek with me, take me over, take me, please. The ringing terror fills my mind, a cup of water is poured into a bog. The level sinks. The green lapping waves hit the tree, a fish bobs to the surface, silent noises of cicadas. A great. What?

The breasted beast is in the knar of my white wood. The door, knar, knar, scratch. All stands behind the whitewashed windows and clear doors of infinity. Swirl in whirls my eyes shall do.

I stand again and lead myself to the door. Light froths through the tall window behind me. Music like the sweetest of all honeysuckles plays. Rasps of coughs and twirls of grain. Light is all there is here in my room. Pale light, cold air, warm skin, cold toes. I am nude in the room, a noise calls to me from behind the door. I touch it. He is here, behind me. He, he looms in great mouths. No please his eyes, the writing tentacles covered in grey slime approach my mouth, filling my mouth, my nose, my sinus are overtaken as I try and gasp for air, he sees through me, the room grows pale, my toes rip against the floor, I stick my hand through my mouth, my forearm into my stomach, I rip him out, The hard pink cups grab my hand, blood coats it as the slime pours forward from my nose. I breathe softly. My tears shake as I move my hands about my knees. I split in repetitive duplicates of me. There I am, again, by the window, masturbating, on the floor, crying, hitting my head against a wall, taking the sharp rose petal against my self. There I am, the resting hourglass that spills upward.

I rip over my toys; my pajamas have spacemen on them. They smell of the house. House of vagueness I must admit. House of toys and words long gone. The house before the one before this, the house before and before, the house after the first and before the fifth. Jitterbug spins on the roof and piano rings to me. Mother is calling. The door. I trip no more.

The door opens and the hallway warps around, twisting edges. Mother is in the end. Mother of peace, mother of grey skin, and vomit-soaked lips. Am I real? The pages of yellowed scorn, the words of a boy so afraid. My teeth bite my arm, puncturing the skin, the sweet honey pours forward, a small apple tree foams on my tongue. Thoughts and ink are full of nothing more than bitter flavor and old smell. The fragrance of clods and clopping noises. The horses pull me away, apart and in twain, betwixt and twain, old and archaic. My bones grow, puncturing out through my skin. No, they don’t. Erase that. _Click_ , the typewriter twists backward. He opens a bottle of whitewashing ink; he wipes me away. Good, read it again. The door opens and the hallway warps around, twisting edges. Mother is in the end. Mother of peace, mother of grey skin, and vomit-soaked lips. Am I real? The pages of yellowed scorn, the words of a boy so afraid. My teeth bite my arm, puncturing the skin, the sweet honey pours forward, a small apple tree foams on my tongue. Thoughts and ink are full of nothing more than bitter flavor and old smell. The fragrance of clods and clopping noises. The horses pull me away, apart and in twain, betwixt and twain, old and archaic. All right, well, here, maybe next have him describe vaguely what happens and steer away from really direct words, more or less create images that confuse, yet are, you know, still able to seen. Also, try and use like the grotesque words in a reserved manner, don’t go, you know, too far. He nods, the machine types again, fresh ribboned ink applies my face.

Introspective nightmares spliced over and over again. Ramble and move, ramble, and move. The hallway has no bends. I walk through and through, the wet carpet touches my toes, someone spilled, a grating noise from behind me. A nail, stern against a board the cutting sounds, a knife ripped and lunged. I walk through the mirth. Sounds of jazz play above me. I look up, reflected against me is me, I look down, reflected against me is me, I look right, reflected against me is me, I look left, reflected against me is nothing. A great nothing. A black wall that stretches, I go to touch it, but it passes through nothing, it falls through the thick black air. Forever it drones the deep black void, the endless nothingness. An echo of silence covers me as the cool breeze touches my face, a cold tight wave of ice. A sound knocks at the door, miles away, it knocks. The sailor has his calling, so I turn from the door and plunge into the great black sea.

I pull the thick brown oars backward, forward, the thick sand drags against the base of my boat the thick white sand cuts away at my wood. Four days and four nights upon the motion of the sea. Sirs alone here on my open creation. Blue in grey atop the majesty of sparkled green. I left everything atop the edge of the climax. 

On the morn of my departure, the pounding motion of some distant being rang to me. The distant beating of pornographic delight drew me. Draw me closer, drew me then, together in infinite grain.

The day is no longer, for the night has ceased. Miasma fills the air, the pale air, pale and pale, over again. Tight skin, I must recall. I came for the door; I came for the answers. Something calls. On the first day, the noise of a gull called overhead, I looked to the gull and above me, it soared. The large eye above me left and right, it was searching too. Alone upon the inked air, it soared for answers. My beard caught the air, my thick oiled hair blown backward. The gull cut back and steered to his left. Goodbye, my dear bird, the companion of the air, for hours and millennia you guided me now. So, I must leave you behind as the sparks of silence draw me closer.

Moments between the gull and the third night were of nothing but empty waves. No trills, no peaks of majestic mannerism, no lows of troughs, nothing to hold. The flat crystalline motion of the swept lake. The lake before the reflective pool of teary-eyed basins.

_“Now upon the fo’c’sle,_

_No more work and woe,_

_Let me dream of darling,_

_O darling,_

_O’Hara.”_

Sung aloud, I echo throughout. The words trace the seamless tomb of disenchanted realms. I sing aloud, over and over to escape the sealess shores. The great yellow and green seas. The great buzzing monster that follows me near.

The third night rolled upon me. It would be over soon, I knew it. Or do I know? Know, Knew? Happening, Happened? Motion to the phonograph of shrieks. I saw my wife that night, the third faithful night. My wife and my daughter Katerine. There before the calm mirror below me, they rang to me. They whispered my name:

-Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.

My wife wished to embrace me, I almost fell in. Her face, so pale and sweet, her hair, arched around her cheeks, lips, so sweet with red honey. I stood atop the edge of the boat, her face reflected in the starless sky, the music box under her. My daughter, so peaceful, her words, her mutilated skin, the fire. Oil too hot, my fault. Nasty spirits at sea they say, they try to get you to jump in. Almost did that night. Tears stopped me as they warmed my cheek. They spilled over that night, like soiled milk.

_“Let me dream of darling,_

_O darling,_

_O’Hara._

_Night is new_

_My dear,_

_Let me hold you near,_

_My darling,_

_My darling_

_O’Hara.”_

Sweet songs to pass the time. My father taught me to sing when the pain got too great in the chest.

“Let it ring out for all the world to hear, who cares if yer flat or too high, let the sufferin’ out.” Words of wise manners from the depths of the distant grave.

“Now upon the fo’c’sle,

No more work and woe,

Let me dream of darling,

O darling,

O’Hara.”

Upon now, the now of the fifth, the sea has turned to dirt. My boat has washed ashore, and the desert is smooth beyond the pales of my own eyes. I walk to the open door, the closed door, the pounding. Whispers come to me, the voice of my loss. Whisper now, echoes, the marching clicks of dancing suns spiral. Spiral, circle, lines, shapes, squares, everything is deteriorating before me. My coat grew

_“Let me dream of darling,_

_too heavy, so I shed_

_O darling,_

_O’Hara._

it off me, my hat too tight, rough.

_Night is new_

_My dear,_

_Shed it all._

_Let me hold you near,_

_My darling,_

_My darling_

_O’Hara.”_

Leave behind the emaciated form the voices speak. The chamber music echoes in sorrow. The lonely bachelor sees no guests yet selects the proudest of all movements for them. I hear no more silence upon this empty plain.

voices to voice and echo echo echo echo, we march now today not more the loss of me is the action of sparks and memories gone the thirst ache for me now, the phallus arches my mind taken in by the lost pounding no eyes here to see me die the world only watches me

go on and on a spectacle of absolution carved to the pitiless stone we all are carved brothers in mother and sisters around fathers sex to reproduce coitus and life and death we shoot

from a cannon and hit the ground splat goes the head of the snippy tune splat I walk across my life amongst the clouds faceless aberrations entice me to tie me tice the tie to the morn of my lie be today my dear my mother calls the

door I see the door before me the red wash smiles to me the music box her music box the

screams in fires the screams in agony of her birth my birth my mother embrace me all mother my wife my daughter women and women around me leave me to walk mother open the door son open the door she calls the red door the blue is gone the mist gone the night gone the door remains my hands covered in the dirt of my sin now I open,

the door.

Open now, my soul must breathe, the night air soothes me. Christmas, ten years past. My life but a silent flute and piper beneath the stars. My mother sleeps on this eve, I alone, in my room. The single bed, the volley of stolen words shelved across me. My music upon my head, silently spinning, my spine, silently aching. Pain entices me to walk. So thus, I walk. I leave the house, the noise calls again, the new door, reborn again. White, red, now blue. Tears upon the stream of the mount.

_open says me,_

_open ye,_

_open, and cease,_

_perceive he,_

_ye,_

_the fallen beast!_

Breathe me open. The poor man walks among the sun of miseree. Heat in the skies of Arabia rain down ahead. The Bazar stirs with empty footsteps. Sights and people wander as the breeze of sand fills my nose. No one to trust, no eyes open enough to see God.

The noise pounds again. What noise? My skin, leather and dark, my hair, now brown. A grey head, a door, dreams. Water. Crashing down. Joyous James and jumping shame. Today, I woke in a sweat, prayers, and incense from last night’s hidden ritual. The shame I feel to see the Son. The shame. My family still sleeps as I get ready to depart. A door calls me. My skin. It is drawn (pulled or simply drawn as art I do not know). Something sings atop of the mount and no longer is a prophet. The voices of madness descend across the land of separate tribes. We all crawl to God. Peace within the soul of the lone tree.

I begin before the sun. The sun, hidden beneath the purple sheets that line the horizon. A single star passes above and for a moment, I stand. I stand upon a throne of falsified infinity. I stand before the open eye of the archangel who protects us all, the air stops, and the voices no longer chatter. Silence now above the great pyres of worlds before. Peace no longer, the pounding resumes. The sun is awake. My sandals are too tight, old and worn upon my feet I discard them, footless now, me the man with no feet!

I do not know where I am turned towards. My mind, blank and open ready to die now in this place My world burned in fear I must go, empty faces, everywhere. My mother cold and sweet, my father died before the eve of my second year. Sisters and brothers to cling to my skin, spices, and history unknown to me, yet loved by me. The pounding calls. Awaken and rise upon the distant sun and his harness, the yellow majesty calls, Logos approaches, the infinite sepulcher roars in total silence. Paradox and parallax, separated by the eyes of man, by the ides of march. Now to now, I am alone. My lips thirst as my feet are cut.

Eyes thirst for the shape of love, my skin, so dark, so pale. Purity is but a farce, no sin, no shame. I precede me, I am no ego, no structure thus, alone now, the desert pounds and becomes one along with the ascending storm.

It has been years in this place, eighteen years of solitude. My bones, how brittle they are, I could crush them with a rock, a small rock. Or maybe a short fall. All found an end in two inches for us all. Everything is important I must admit, otherwise I would have long ago. I would have.

-Speak my son, my bright spirit, speak upon the peak of my voice. Speak in silence and action, present your soul, and smile in the face of danger. Peace my son.

Symbols of symbolic matters. They escape me, they repeat endlessly within me. Each person does the same I might assume. Hear a phrase, hear a phrase within them that they have not thought of. Something so elusive and unknown they cannot help but repeat it. Forgotten in the morn it most frequently is, but to the fair few, it is but an endless supply of joy they can hold onto.

I have not hungered nor thirsted in a millennia. My body is behind me, no more wants, only purity upon me. Pounding draws me.

**eyes, closing. Mouth, empty. Pounding.**

**Move, no. pound. scream, wake. no**

**move. move me, son.**

Something unwinds in tidal waves. A storm begins ahead, my mother must be afraid, my tears can see her. Storm and sand buzz overhead. We walk no longer; we move no longer. Hidden behind, my eyes see it. A lone building, a single door. Louder. Always louder. Days away.

I begin now, I begin. I woke up in a sweat…no, I must remember, the door, I am here, I am now. No mother. The eyes see. The mouth tastes. No. Depart. Shoot the shot of lead-filled poison. We ate the snake, not the apple. We witnessed joy, not suffering. Joy. Open. I walk today, begin, Mother, eyes. Hold on to nothing, blow away. Tent in the distant rays of the hidden sun. Sun, clouds, the creation. Heerenowwhemn. Walk.

Focus, do not cease. Do not cease.

Noise begins.

Noise begins.

 _You_ must begin.

God is watching.

The building stands before me. No peak. No storm. The flatlands expand and silence ensues. Pounding noise and agony. I open the door outside. Inside, another door. Another. Black, no screams inside. No more pounding, only the sweat dripping from my face as I cross the threshold. Now, I am born.

Walk to the noise of the self walk to the noise of the bee walk and walk and work and work we begin in the same way we write in never-ending action. No ceasing no ceasing what do I mean ink on a page ink on a page I am constructed the hand guides me it guides us all no freedom mother hold me freak and freak we are I am afraid I am always, always

afraid of the others who stand before me. The smiling faces of those who claim to embrace me I fear wish to only slay me I live a thousand lives I answer the questions before they’re asked, I am not alone there are those who are but afraid those who have answered too soon those who are so apart from me they are like me

too afraid to speak too afraid to move fear rules the eyes fear tastes the blood of the hand no soul in the end ink on a page ink on the stained universe around us. We walk with no judgment I am but afraid I have no prophecy the tweedledoo birds and blum fairire spring in the skies and hark to no one man and woman is pitiful err after err no human can save us no man no woman. Ink on a page words put into a funneled pool my words are not true written and sprawled by a lonesome boy afraid he is too. He speaks through me someone speaks through all of us shapeless figures imagined by the enigmas who watch us we are afraid we cannot prove anything we are but a theorem of infinite

sorrow. The gate beckons for us to weep. The gate beckons to me. I must answer the call. It rings, the red rings ring, the shaking buzz.

The curtain is drawn, the red ends lifted upward, bright yellow lights envelop me, my eyes tighten and burn for a moment. I pause. It rings. I walk to the phone; my black shoes tap across the silent stage, loud and muffled, click, click. I pause before the phone, sweat pooling beneath the tips of my fingers. I pick up the phone, a sound of breathing comes from the other end. Then, silence breaks through, an unbearable silence, an echo of a red ball thrown through the chasm of the winding psyche. The curtains fall, the cold air thrown over my face, the lights snuffed out, a black shining void.

“Again! Again!” Cries the crowd.

Again, again.


End file.
